Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio

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Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio

• Documenting and Reflecting on the Development of
  Your Communication Skills

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Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio

• Skills of Effective Technical Communicators
• Documenting Your Development of Communication
  Skills
• Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio System
• Reflecting on Your Development
• Sharing Your Work with Employers

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Skills of Effective Technical Communicators

• 5 minute writing
• What skills do effective technical communicators
  possess?
• What tasks do they customarily perform when they
  prepare documents?
• What kinds of documents do they produce?

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Learning Objectives for RH 330, Technical
Communication

• Familiarity with the forms of communication
  appropriate to workplace communication
• Ability to apply organizational patterns to
  structure technical information
• Ability to perform audience analysis as the basis
  for planning and completing any communication task

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Learning Objectives

• Ability to locate information and assess its
  accuracy
• Consistent use of proper spelling, grammar,
  punctuation, and mechanics
• Experience with testing audience response
• Familiarity with various technologies useful in
  the completing of communication tasks

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Institute Communication Learning Objectives

• Defined as An ability to communicate
  effectively in oral, written, graphical, and
  visual forms
• Specified further by 5 criteria
• Identify the readers/audience for a communication
  task by assessing their technical knowledge and
  information needs.

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Communication

• Organize and/or design information to meet
  readers/audience needs..
• Provide content that is factually correct,
  supported with evidence, explained with
  sufficient detail, and properly documented.

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Communication

• Test readers/audience response to communication
  tasks to determine how well ideas have been
  relayed.
• Submit work with a minimum of errors in spelling,
  punctuation, grammar, and usage.

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Documenting Your Development

• Opportunities to work on developing your
  communication skills Assignments, Peer Review,
  Conferences, Final Report, Oral Reports
• Feedback on your work
• Course Objectives Matrix
• Electronic system to store your work
• Available to prospective employers

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Electronic Documentation Method RosE-Portfolio
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Reflecting on Your Development

• Industry Standard Performance Review Forms
• Example from Cummins Engine
• Reflective Statement for Communication

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What is a Reflective Statement?

• A very important element in portfolio
• Helps you assess your accomplishments at Rose
• Reflective statement makes a case or argues for
  the relevance of the submitted file to a
  particular learning objective

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Questions that the RS answers

• What did I do?
• What does it mean?
• What have I learned?
• How might I do things differently?
• Why is it relevant to this objective?

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Sample 1

• I wrote my Tech Comm report for two reader types,
  a RHIT student and a professional non-expert.
  The report topic is recent development in DVD
  technology. It is a really good paper.

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Sample 2

• I wrote this report on DVD technology for the
  Tech Comm class. In order to plan this report, I
  had to take into consideration the audience I was
  writing for. I decided to address my report to
  junior-level electrical engineering students who
  are interested in learning more about DVD. For
  these readers, I included a glossary of terms
  that . . .

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Sample 2 (continued)

• provide a basic vocabulary for DVD. I also
  thought my readers would be better informed if I
  included a section on the history of DVD
  development. My professional non-expert reader
  was accommodated in section 4, which gives a case
  study analysis of DVD application in the
  entertainment industry. I assumed that the
  second reader would be more interested in how
  changes in technology affect specific industries.

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Sharing Your Work with Employers

• Professional Portfolios
• Your Job Search this year
• Access for Employers
• Determined and Controlled by You

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Why is RHIT doing this?

• Quality control
• Are students achieving desired outcomes?
• How can we improve our educational process?
• Provide evidence to constituencies
• accreditation funding agencies
• recruiters, prospective students
• faculty

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Who will be looking at your portfolio?

• You
• Your faculty advisor
• Faculty raters
• Technical support team
• Anyone else to whom you give permission (e.g.,
  potential employers)

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What will faculty raters do with the information?

• Report assessment results in aggregate
• Make recommendationsfor improving the
  educational process
• Give feedback to students that were rated

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Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio

• Skills of Effective Technical Communicators
• Documenting Your Development of Communication
  Skills
• Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio System
• Reflecting on Your Development
• Sharing Your Work with Employers