{"title":"Visual ethics: a past case and a present one","authors":"P. Dombrowski","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245522","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245522","url":null,"abstract":"Visual representations are powerful aids to communication, making points with clarity and force but they can offer opportunities for ethical and rhetorical lapses. Two cases are examined: Ernst Haeckel's illustrations of supposed embryonic states in support of his biogenetic law in the late-1800s and Jan Schon's graphs of ground-breaking research findings in solid state physics very recently. Both sets of illustration have been shown to be fraudulent. In visual ethics the key questions remain the same: how did the visual come about, what do they mean, and do they show what they claim to represent?.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128111022","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Application of Goffman's social interaction theories to the technical communicator/engineer relationship","authors":"N. Amare, S. St Pierre","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245504","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245504","url":null,"abstract":"Technical communicators spend much of their time creating, editing, and revising text and images to guide the audience/reader/user/consumer to use a technical product more effectively. In order to help the user, however, the technical communicator must understand exactly what the engineering team intended in designing the product. This process involves developing and maintaining a healthy relationship between the technical communicator and the engineer, one which includes open and active lines of communication. This paper discusses Erving Goffman's social interaction theories from the discipline of sociology and what contribution these theories can make to the technical communicator/engineer relationship. Specifically, Goffman's presentation of self theory and impression management theory are applied as potential relationship-building practices for technical communicators. Implications for face-to-face, phone, and e-mail communication methods of successful interaction and relationship-building are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116177257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Readability of model consent forms provided by IRBs","authors":"K. Riley, J. Mackiewicz","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245483","url":null,"abstract":"Institutional review boards (IRBs) often provide model consent forms for researchers to use or adapt when conducting human subjects research. However, the models themselves often far exceed the 8th-grade reading level recommended for consent forms, with many models measuring grade 12 or higher. In this paper, we look specifically at how muck and how, model consent forms deviate from the desired 8th-grade reading level, as measured by the Flesch Reading Ease formula and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level formula. We discuss quantifiable features measurable by these formulas and by text analysis features available in Microsoft Word (e.g., sentence length, paragraph length, and percentage of passive voice sentences). We outline plans to examine additional features such as nominalization, patterns in the flow of given and new information, and document design. Our findings are designed to help IRBs and researchers prepare consent forms that are more readable and, therefore, more in keeping with legal and ethical guidelines for human subjects research.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122752140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Knowledge portals support widely distributed oilfield projects","authors":"J. Etkind, K. Bennaceur, M. Drnec, C. Luppens","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245490","url":null,"abstract":"This paper documents how project knowledge portals facilitate knowledge capture, validation, preservation, and sharing across widely distributed oilfield projects. These portals serve as the project focal point for the capturing of key project objectives, plans, processes, and activities. In addition, the portal connects the project to all other distributed projects, experts, and corporate knowledge repositories. Projects can be held to the highest quality, health, safety and environmental (QHSE) standards y means of a transparent and easily auditable,Web-accessible management system. By storing project data on a secure Web server, employees worldwide can have access to the content anytime and anywhere. Currently over 300 projects with project knowledge portals have been developed. Benefits of the implementation of the project knowledge portal include the reduction of lost project data, enhanced collaboration between projects and technical experts, minimization of travel, and reduced intranet bandwidth consumption. Project files are classified according to stringent confidentiality standards. Selected files may be made available to specified clients and subcontractors allowing cross-organizational teams to effectively share data, hence significantly reducing administrative engineering.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"64 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123322870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Audiences involved, imagined, and invoked: trends in user-centered interactive information design","authors":"D. Dayton","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245510","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245510","url":null,"abstract":"Practitioners in information architecture and interaction design have begun to use elaborate procedures for creating and communicating \"personas,\" realistically detailed psychographic profiles of archetypal users. Design teams collaboratively invent these vivid fictional characters based on market segmentation data and user research. Teams strive to capture the product-related needs and goals of personas in condensed narratives called \"scenarios\" that depict the personas interacting with the product to achieve a particular goal. Personas and scenarios have only recently entered the conceptual vocabulary of professional communication. At present, they remain on the margins of our knowledge domain, in the contact zone with the discourse of information architects and interaction designers. This paper illustrates and explains the use of personas and scenarios for user and task analysis, glosses the origin and evolution of these methods, reviews the most recent communications about them by prominent interaction design and usability professionals, and links them to theorizing about the writer-reader relationship in the scholarship of rhetoric, composition, and professional communication. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of how the new storytelling approaches to user and task analysis affect theory, teaching, research, and practice in professional communication.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"33 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124099908","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The fixation of knowledge: the general shape of information and its practical consequences for information design","authors":"A. Manning","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245487","url":null,"abstract":"Though professional communication theorists typically borrow from other disciplines (linguistics, rhetoric, cognitive or social psychology, etc.) we might develop a freestanding theory of information design, related perhaps to other disciplines, but still independent, in the way that organic chemistry is a freestanding discipline separate in many ways from general chemistry. I propose a base for such a theory in C.S. Peirce's general model of inquiry (1877). Useful information is shaped by a definitive question (topic) which moves an audience to search information for answers. Professional communication theory can be independently driven by the kinds of questions it seeks answers to.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132028504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M.T. Davis, J. Ramey, J. Williams, L. Gurak, R. Krull, M. Steehouder
{"title":"Shaping the profession: leading academic programs in technical communication","authors":"M.T. Davis, J. Ramey, J. Williams, L. Gurak, R. Krull, M. Steehouder","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245477","url":null,"abstract":"The panel of academic program administrators who participate in this discussion share challenges and successes in developing and leading programs in technical communication. The purpose is to provide a forum to share ideas and information. Informal conversations allow for audience participation.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133577605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Graduate engineering professional development","authors":"Gail Palmer, Devorah Slavin","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245489","url":null,"abstract":"Effective focus on professional development in graduate engineering programs benefits students, academia, and industry. Formal communication skills, such as writing and presentation skills, are integral to professional development and are an asset for engineers in both academia and industry. However, graduates destined for careers in industry also benefit from informal professional development skills, sometimes called \"soft skills\" or \"people skills\" that help them effectively promote ideas and negotiate engineering project concepts with peers inside and outside of the field of engineering. Although industry leaders have noted the lack of soft skills in engineers, even those graduate engineering programs that include instruction in formal communication skills often neglect to include the professional development skills that are so crucial for success in industry. A n engineering program that includes both professional development and communication skills at the graduate level truly prepares students to succeed as engineering professionals in the 21st century.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123216133","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Assessing genre as rhetorical performance in software design","authors":"A. Williams","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245500","url":null,"abstract":"When organizations outsource, seeking expert help from external companies or consultants, often those in consulting roles will introduce new texts in order to help manage workflows and transform known work processes, all with the intention of improving work practices. Such scenarios challenge a key claim in rhetorical genre studies which perceives genres as actions that respond to situations that recur. As much as genre studies' notion of recurrence helps us understand texts' ability to facilitate communication in recurring workplace processes, it offers little insight into theoretical or methodological approaches for professional or technical communicators who may want to address, in theory, research, or practice, how workers use texts that have been imposed upon them with the purpose of creating situations entirely new to them and with the expectation that the new situation will stabilize and recur over time (as what often happens when companies merge or outsource). This kind of abrupt introduction of texts into the workplace marks phenomena called \"genre dumping.\" In this paper, rhetorical genre theory and its application to genre dumping in technical communication has been examined, which have two aims: (a) to discuss how genre studies gives shape to what we know about how texts work in professional settings where technical work happens; and (b) to assess issues that genre dumping presents to rhetorical genre theory.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"365 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122315416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"About face: comparing positive politeness in Dummies and conventional software documentation","authors":"K. Riley","doi":"10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245511","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2003.1245511","url":null,"abstract":"Previous researchers have noted rhetorical differences between primary manuals (i.e., those produced by the manufacturer) and secondary (i.e., after-market) manuals such as those in the Dummies series. Three manuals for Dreamweaver 4 software - the primary manual, the Dummies manual and another secondary manual - were compared for their use of positive politeness strategies identified by Brown & Levinson within the theory of linguistic pragmatics. The Dummies manual uses a large variety and number of positive politeness strategies. These strategies account in large part for the unique tone of the Dummies manual. In addition, because positive politeness strategies serve to build rapport, these strategies may account for the popularity of the Dummies series. The theory of positive politeness provides a well-developed, systematic method for describing and explaining the way that tone is achieved through the use of specific linguistic features.","PeriodicalId":439913,"journal":{"name":"IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 2003. IPCC 2003. Proceedings.","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2003-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130770401","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}