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Survey for New USF Tech. Comm. Program — Would These Courses Create Highly Qualified Tech Writers?
August 2nd, 2007 | Posted in Technical Writing |
If you’ve got a minute, please complete a quick survey about a new technical writing track that may possibly be implemented by USF (Univ. of South Florida). The survey’s purpose: “We seek your advice on ways to provide the Tampa Bay area with more qualified, desired, and hirable technical communicators.”
Survey link: ttp://CTLSilhouette.wsu.edu
Take a ride down Writer River, a social news site for technical communicators.
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August 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
Alas, most technical communication programs today are so 1983. And here’s another Technical Communication program gone wrong. Where is the modular writing/structured authoring classes? Where are the DITA classes?? What about component content management? Anyone for localization? How about collecting metrics? ROI anyone?
Educators would do future students a favor if they actually knew what skills are in demand in actual workplaces. The rhetoric is only something spoken about in universities. Sure, it’s important. But, it’s not a job requirement. No one is looking for a technical writer who is skilled in the rhetoric, version 3.2. Hell, if you graduate from any university from any program without being able to use the rhetoric, something is wrong with your school.
English department focused classes are created by English profs in a vacuum. They are lame and don’t produce advanced, highly educated technical communication professionals. Instead, they produce ill-prepared English majors that we have to train (and retrain) after they have been brainwashed to believe that work in the real world will be like they said it would be in school. Most graduates are surprised by what they don’t know and what they still need to learn.
The US is lagging behind every other industrialized nation for a reason. We aren’t competitive. So, instead of teaching things students need to be competitive, we teach English classes packaged as a techcomm certificate. Hello, English is not the be-all-end-all. It’s like schools have not realized we are in a global marketplace. English and MS Office talents don’t differentiate students from the rest of the pack. Teaching specialized skills like XML stylesheet and DTD development, topic-based architecture, and writing for reuse would serve students better.
It’s pathetic what is being sold as education nowadays. My advice. Go to training seminars. Trainers sell classes that sell. In other words, if there’s no demand, they don’t offer the courses. Universities should start watching trainers — and classified ads — and they’d know what they should be teaching. It also wouldn’t hurt them to get out of their educational institutions every once in a while and work a real tech comm job.
I can dream, can’t I?
Scott Abel
TheContentWrangler.com
August 4th, 2007 at 7:51 am
Scott, I totally agree with you on this. If a graduate entered the field with a solid foundation in XML, content management, and DITA, that would really be something. I don’t think the instructors themselves are that tech savvy, though. Academics tend to focus on concepts and the abstract. The perception is that technical knowledge is vocational, trade-school-like knowledge.
And tools are always changing. Several years ago, you had to know RoboHelp to be competitive. Now, it’s hardly an issue. Academics use the argument that because tools are always changing, they shouldn’t be the focus of any curriculum. Granted, you’re not even talking about tools but rather concepts in technologies. But perhaps they would classify things like DITA into the same boat? I’m not sure.
I think technical writers need to get some founding in technology that goes beyond concepts. I’m not sure how to teach it, but a good tech writing program should teach students how to be tech savvy, how to learn new programs, figure out complicated systems, adapt to changing technical environments. They should offer a course that requires students to learn a new technical concept, tool, or technology every week and see if the student can keep up.
Thanks again for your comments.
August 6th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Sure, understanding the concepts is the biggest thing, but concepts without a practical basis aren’t really learned. It would be more difficult for universities to keep up with a changing environment, but it would be far more valuable for the students to learn what life is like now. When I was in graduate school, some teachers were still giving classes using the same lecture notes they wrote 20 years before.
And really, in this field some of the concepts ARE changing because of the tools. There didn’t used to be any emphasis on getting the community involved in creating documentation, but wikis, blogs, and podcasts are changing that.