The Professionalization of Technical Communication

Faber article is important to the field because of his exploration of what constitutes professionalism. It is a struggle (at least in Technical Communication) that we’ll read more about the rest of the semester. In recent years, the Society for Technical Communication has undertaken two initiatives to prove, if you will, the professionalization of Technical Communication. One is the effort to provide certification. They established a test that has three levels: foundation, practitioner, and expert. This timed test covers nine core areas of technical communication and it costs over $600 to take the test (regardless of which test you take). This testing was created in much the same way that plumbers, engineers, lawyers, etc. take an certification exam. One of STC’s intentions with the certification exam is to professionalize the field. The other effort is the Body of Knowledge(BOK) project. This project, which is a voluntary collaborative effort between academics and industry professionals, explicates in one place the body of knowledge, hence its name, for technical communication. As the website states, this task is difficult in Technical Communication because the knowledge is dispersed, that is so interdisciplinary, that collecting all the knowledge in one place is challenging. Both projects contribute to STC’s efforts to professionalize the field, which is good for technical writers who must defend their field on a continual basis as well as to increase their value to employers, which hopefully also increase their salaries and prestige.

The same kind of skepticism of Technical Communication that happens in industry also happens in academia. I’ve been lucky in my department to have colleagues who respect the work that I do. But many English departments don’t regard Technical Communication on the same level as Literature, for example. Although it is happening less and less, but still does happen. Part of this disdain comes from the perspective of Technical Communication as a practical discipline, when in fact it is heavily theoretical. Faber mentions this discord in his discussion about a teaching student a rhetorical approach (democratic) to their work and the capitalistic approach of the workplace. Among the “lack of theory” perspective, I experience this challenge in two ways: in the classroom, when students tell me they are only taking my classes in order to get a better job and higher wages, but in the same breath degrades the work of a technical communicator as too practical and not as lofty as an editor or creative writer. I also experience when graduate students tell me that they want to get a job in the academic realm of Technical Communication because “that’s where the jobs are.” Yet, they don’t want to take any of my classes or learn anything that technical writers really do (like document design and deep audience analysis). They think that because they have a rhetorical degree (that is, anything that has to do with the study of language) that they can easily write a technical document. If they do actually take my classes, they are shocked when they get their first writing back with a lower grade than they expected. I once had a graduate student select Technical Communication for her comprehensive exams because she thought it would be a slam dunk because she worked as a technical writer. I asked her what Heidegger meant by “standing reserve,” which is a reading from the digital literacies course and also on the comps list. Of course, she hadn’t read it and was in fact not familiar with the comps list. These instances, which are becoming fewer, demonstrate the kind of perspective nonprofessionals in Technical Communication have toward that area. If you are getting the Graduate Certificate in Technical Communication, what inspired you to seek out this degree? How much knowledge did you have about the field before applying for admission? Is your perspective different now? What changes to the program would you suggest I consider for the future?

Social Media

Well, Chapter 14 is written like all the other chapters in that it presents information in a generic, textbookish mode. Cornelissen basically provides us with definitions of the various social media until the end when he talks about opportunities, but even that section is generic. What surprised me is the very critical tone of the Nestle’s case study. I think it is the most critical of all of them in the book. On page 260, Cornelissen does talk about “social presence theory,” which sounds interesting, but he doesn’t go much beyond defining it. To me, that should have been the framework of the chapter. I also wanted to hear more about it.

What I’d like to ask you all is if I should use this textbook again and why or why not? There’s another textbook I had considered using, you might remember from an earlier post, Corporate Communication by Paul Argenti. Check out the table of contents and other information here: http://shop.mheducation.com/highered/product.M0073403172.html. Of course, this book costs $125, which is why I went with the Cornelissen text, as I’ve said before. I’ll be interested to hear what you think.

Leadership & Change

Chapter 12 (Leadership and Change) reminded me of a movement a few years ago at UNO for faculty. Each year, we have to review our activities (teaching, research, and service) in order to qualify for merit increases. We receive two kinds of pay increases at UNO—negotiated raise and merit. Because we’re unionized, faculty receive a negotiated raise that usually anywhere from 1-3%. We also receive merit increases based on performance. In the English department, we share merit increases evenly, but I understand that not all departments/units do that. It is miniscule. Last year, I think I receive $68 in merit money. Both the negotiated raise and the merit increase are added to our base salary. Anyway, the merit review involves making a list, essentially, of what we have accomplished for the past year. We include items such as teaching evaluations, articles, and service accomplishments. A few years ago, UNO switched from the paper system of reporting merit to a digitally based system called Digital Measures. Most of the faculty hated this new system, which is likely due to the fact that it was new and different and one had to take the time to learn it. I think it works well as a reporting device because when the University needs to know certain information, such as how many articles faculty published last year, it can just run a report. This makes administrative work a lot easier. To connect it to the chapter, I thought about how the university managed this change. I don’t think they handled it poorly, but it was distinctly a top-down communication method. For about two years, we did have a system that Information Services created called myMapp. People really hated that system. But we only had it for a couple of years, I’m guess, because it was to costly to maintain ourselves. Digital Measures is a system we bought from a company (I don’t know which one.) Anyway, I think Digital Measures is an effective reporting system and not an example of Big Brother (which some faculty think).

When I read Chapter 13, I relieved that we finally have a chapter that focuses on ethics. Cornelissen’s treatment of this chapter still seems somewhat whitewashed, but as I said before, that is likely due to the genre of the textbook. When he mentioned “corporate citizenship,” I immediately thought of Citizen United, which I’ll state from the beginning that I believe should be overturned. Given that Cornelissen is European, I’m not sure he connected the two such as I am doing. But I find it difficult to view corporate citizenship as a portfolio of activities when the United States has corporations buying elections—not to bring up a political discussion. He at least was being a little more critical of corporations than in previous chapters. I’m especially dismayed with Kraft and what I see as unbridled greed. The only reason Kraft wanted Cadbury is because it was more successful, but as Cornelissen says, it also burdened Cadbury with tremendous debt. How much money does one corporation need? And to outright lie that they would take care of the employees. This is not only making me want to rethink buying Kraft products but also making me want to understand/learn more about business and how it operates.