Field Of Technical Communication Research Articles

Generative AI in Technical Communication: A Review of Research from 2023 to 2024

Since its release in late 2022, ChatGPT and subsequent generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools have raised a wide variety of questions and concerns for the field of technical communication: How will these tools be incorporated into professional settings? How might we appropriately integrate these tools into our research and teaching? In this review, we examine research published in 2023–2024 addressing these questions ( N = 28). Overall, we find preliminary evidence that GAI tools can positively impact student writing and assessment; they also have the potential to assist with some aspects of academic and medical research and writing. However, there are concerns about their reliability and the ethical conundrums raised when they are used inappropriately or when their outputs cannot be distinguished from humans. More research is needed for evidence-based teaching and research strategies as well as policies guiding ethical use. We offer suggestions for new research avenues and methods.

A Meta-Analysis on the process of how to understand Semantic Correlation Rules

The academic training of young professionals plays a particularly important role in the field of technical communication (TC). Since well-trained specialists are in great demand in this domain, it’s important for students to successfully learn semantic correlation rules. But there must be a good interaction between different parties because students face major challenges when it comes to TC topics such as content management, metadata management or semantic technologies. There are several challenges to understanding in the considered case of semantic modelling and technical communication in general. However, this paper does not just show different ways of bringing together the different perspectives of students, lecturers and institutions related to a specialized course on semantic correlation rules. Rather, it develops a new area of work that enables new collaborations and takes the field of technical communication to a new level.

Who are China's Technical Communicators? A Survey on the State of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion of the Profession

Purpose: This study updates our understanding of the group features of China's technical communication coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our research uncovers workplace inequities in the profession by identifying and analyzing a wide range of professional differences in knowledge, skills, experience, practice, performance, benefits, opportunities, challenges, and discoveries. It is more than just a diversity report. We seek to help academics and practitioners across the world develop a basic grasp of China's technical communication, practitioners, and working conditions from a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) perspective. Method: We designed a four-part survey with 50 questions to examine DEI variables in several areas such as demographics, professional activities, career development, and challenges and problems. A total of 259 technical communicators from a target population of about 1,200 responded to our questionnaire. Results: Diversity is an intrinsic feature of China's technical communication because of its short history of professionalization. Practitioners' educational backgrounds, language ability, job titles, affiliated departments, working activities and deliverables, and so on all exhibit diversity. Because of the lack of DEI initiatives, many participants reported structural inequalities in their career development. Conclusion: The DEI situation in the field of China's technical communication is incarnated as a collective professional identity crisis in practitioners. This identity crisis has historical, societal, organizational, individual, and environmental reasons. To tackle it, we propose inclusive development as an effective DEI initiative.

Productivity of Machine Translation

This article is about the field of technical translation which is called machine translation (MT), or machine-assisted translation. This method of translation uses various types of computer software to generate translations from a source language to a target language without the assistance of a human. There are different methods of machine translation. A plethora of machine translators in the form of free search engines are available online. However, within the field of technical communication, there are two basic types of machine translators, which are able to translate massive amounts of text at a time. There are transfer-based and data-driven machine translators. Transfer-based machine translation systems, which are quite costly to develop, are built by linguists who determine the grammar rules for the source and target languages. The machine works within the rules and guidelines developed by the linguist. Due to the nature of developing rules for the system, this can be very time-consuming and requires an extensive knowledge base about the structures of the languages on the part of the linguist; nonetheless, the majority of commercial machine translators are transfer-based machines. .

The Profession and Practice of Technical Communication: Yvonne Cleary: [Book Review

This book provides an up-to-date, research-based, but practical and accessible description of contemporary technical communication practice in a global environment. It gives readers a thorough understanding of the technical communication field by emphasizing how it should be viewed as a profession, how one might pursue a career in it, and finally how to practice it. Finally, the book draws the reader’s attention to background material with a succinct summary of ideas that have been popularized in both literature and practice. In addition, the book’s extensive multiple method study methodology provides a solid justification for the information’s foundation. The book has nine chapters that are divided into the following three sections: An introduction to the fundamentals of technical communication as a profession; an examination into how diverse the technical communication profession is—for instance, by examining the many competencies required, various sorts of activities that are performed, and various work environment options accessible, including working from home; and finally, an introduction into the theories and procedures that serve as the book’s foundation and link the first two sections to a research framework. This book is accessible and useful for industry practitioners, students, and teachers. The book also helps novices by giving them all the knowledge they need about the subject, educational options, societies, technologies, necessary skills, workplaces, and the need to adapt quickly to changing conditions to meet future needs. Real-world case studies and the sharing of technical communicators’ real experiences are of tremendous value to professionals and will aid in the development of their technical communication skills.

Data Handling Process in Extended Reality (XR) When Delivering Technical Instructions

Purpose: Extended reality (XR) is a promising new medium that creates environments combining real and virtual elements or offers a completely virtual environment for people to experience. In the field of technical communication, XR offers a plethora of possibilities, such as augmenting critical instructions in a work environment. On the downside, XR brings about challenges. For example, issues of privacy and security require more attention due to the risks involved with XR devices continuously collecting data from the users and their surroundings. More knowledge concerning the use of XR as a medium to deliver technical instructions is required. In this article, I address this need by explaining how XR handles data.<br/> Methods: To find out how XR handles data, I used relevant previous research (33 papers and four books) as data for thematic analysis. I coded data systematically according to how XR has been used before and the phases that can be seen in the process of data handling in XR when it is used as a medium for technical instructions.<br/> Results: The data handled in XR can be divided into instructional data, such as assembly instructions, and collected data that XR equipment collects while someone is using it. Data handling in XR can be seen as a process. Based on the thematic analysis, I found six different phases of data handling: collection, processing, storage, transfer, combining, and presentation.<br/> Conclusion: The phases of data handling in XR illustrate in general what happens to the data in XR and what kind of data the equipment collects. My findings add to our understanding of XR as a medium to deliver technical instructions. They also offer a usable framework for mapping the differences between XR and other media as a way to deliver technical instructions.

Promoting Social Justice Through Usability in Technical Communication: An Integrative Literature Review

Purpose: Recently, interest in usability has grown in the technical communication (TC) field, but we lack a current cohesive literature review that reflects this new growth. This article provides an integrative literature review on usability, its goals, and approaches to accomplish those goals in relation to TC's commitment to social justice and empowerment.<br/> Methods: I conducted an integrative literature review on usability to synthesize and characterize TC's growing commitment to social justice and empowerment. I searched scholarly publications and trade literature that included books and book chapters on usability. Adopting grounded theory and content analysis as research techniques to systematically evaluate data corpus, I read and classified selected publications to approach the research questions and iteratively analyzed the data to identify themes within each research question.<br/> Results: Surveying the definitions and descriptions of usability in the literature corpus shows that there is no consensus definition of usability. Findings suggest that the goal of usability can be classified as: a) pragmatic or functional goals, b) user experience goals, and c) sociocultural goals. Given the recent cultural and social justice turns in TC, my findings reveal a number of social justice-oriented design approaches for usability.<br/> Conclusions: Usability should not be viewed solely as a means of achieving pragmatic and/or user experience goals. Practitioners also need to consider usability from sociocultural orientations to accomplish its sociocultural goals. From interconnected global perspectives, the review implies the need for adopting more viable and culturally sustaining design approaches for successfully accommodating cultural differences and complexities for promoting social justice and user empowerment.

Taking the Tactical Out of Technical: A Reassessment of Tactical Technical Communication

This article interrogates the concept of tactical technical communication specifically questioning the established understanding of de Certeau in the field of technical communication. It argues once readers move beyond the concepts of strategies and tactics, they will find a rich and nuanced explanation of how ordinary people “make do” in everyday life.

Twitter Users’ Displays of Affect in the Global Warming Debate

This article engages with recent discussions in the field of technical communication that call for climate change research that moves beyond the believer/denier dichotomy. For this study, our research team coded 900 tweets about climate change and global warming for different emotions in order to understand how Twitter users rely on affect rhetorically. Our findings use quantitative content analysis to challenge current assumptions about writing and affect on social media, and our results indicate a number of arenas for future research on affect, global warming, and rhetoric.

Semantic Correlation Rules as a Logic Layer between Content Management and Content Delivery

Semantic technologies have recently gained considerable influence and attention in the field of technical communication and information management. While metadata management is already a well-known field of content management technologies, its semantic extension addresses more recently, for example, problems of model-based product development and related content engineering processes. On the other hand, dynamic search technology and content delivery can benefit from semantic modelling by enhancing search functionalities or by integrating various data sources utilizing semantic mapping. In this evolving environment, we propose a logical layer of content correlations as so-called semantic correlation rules (SCR). This layer can be understood as an interface between content management systems, semantic modelling systems and content delivery portals. Semantic correlation rules serve as a light-weight ontology consisting primarily of untyped semantic relations between metadata classes. In doing so, class-to-class linking mechanisms can be implemented in content delivery and search environments while serving as a basis for the previously introduced microDoc concept

Contrasting Ontology Modeling with Correlation Rules for Delivery Applications

With the increasing importance of knowledge management, variant management and the ever-growing quantity of data, ontologies emerged as a form of knowledge representation, especially in the field of technical communication for modelling metadata and to create correlations between them. In the area of delivery applications, the deliverable information objects receive a certain intelligence by semantic metadata. It is expected, that ontologies offer a higher level of intelligence which could lead to an improvement in classification, connection and delivery possibilities of content. On the contrary, creating those complex ontologies requires a time-consuming effort. Thus, the question arises, whether their use offers a decisive added benefit or if alternatives, such as untyped correlations, should be preferred. In that case, the concept of Semantic Correlation Rules can offer an opportunity to derive advantages from ontologies: By defining which classifications are connected to others, it is possible to present content tailored to user-specific information requirements. By developing use cases, we aim to evaluate the required level of intelligence of the metadata resulting from its modeling method to achieve this goal.

Review of "Content Strategy in Technical Communication by Guiseppe Getto, Jack T. Labriola, and Sheryl Ruszkiewicz (Eds.). (2020)," Content strategy in technical communication. Routledge.

Getto, Labriola, and Ruszkiewicz's edited collection, Content Strategy in Technical Communication , is an important addition to the field of technical communication, and important as one of the only collections to address best practices in content strategy while also connecting those ideas to pedagogies for teaching. In focusing specifically on content strategy, Getto, Labriola, and Ruszkiewicz note that "content strategists often work within a wide variety of organizations and must respond to an even broader array of situations, challenges, and audience needs" (p. 7). To meet this large array of needs, the chapters in the book argue that pedagogies must integrate content strategy ideas to support student exploration of content strategy work. Connecting content strategy theories and best practices with pedagogies will support more theory development on content strategy, and will provide a better sense of classroom best practices that help learners assess the effectiveness of content, regularly. To accomplish this, the editors divide the book into two parts: Content Strategy Best Practices (chapters 2 through 6) and Content Strategy Pedagogies (chapters 7 through 10).

Best Practices? Lessons from Technical Communication for Online Legal Writing Instruction

There exists a rich literature of legal-writing pedagogy, but legal writing has come somewhat late to the online education space. Meanwhile, the allied field of technical communication has been delivering courses (and degree programs) online since the mid 1990s. This bibliographic essay seeks to offer some connections, insights, and resources that technical communication scholarship may be able to offer to legal writing teachers who choose (or are forced) to deliver education online. The author prepared this essay for the LR&W Online Teaching Excellence Conference, William & Mary Law School, June 19, 2020.

Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action: Rebecca Walton, Kristen R. Moore, and Natasha N. Jones [Book Review

For technical communicators wanting to learn how to enact social justice, Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action by Rebecca Walton, Kristen R. Moore, and Natasha N. Jones is a useful and insightful guide. The book successfully achieves its purpose of introducing technical communicators to social justice scholarship and practice after the social justice turn within the field of technical communication. To successfully achieve its purpose, the book provides technical communicators with methods of understanding oppressive structures in their daily lives and then establishes a theoretical framework for understanding social justice. Using this information, Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn directs technical communicators toward stances of activism, intersectional awareness, and coalitional action. The book’s contribution to the field is that it serves as a comprehensive introduction to social justice after the social justice turn in the field of technical communication and that it anticipates and addresses questions and criticisms that both readers and researchers may have. This book will be a great asset for anyone looking to understand technical communication after the social justice turn and ways to address social justice issues in various situations, including day-to-day interactions and the workplace.

Approaches for deployment and access of content in delivery portals

In the field of Technical Communication the focus has always been on supporting users in their search for information in a way that is appropriate for the target group. Products are becoming more and more complex, current standards require manufacturers to provide up-to-date Technical Documentation and digitalization is advancing rapidly. Content Delivery Portals offer new possibilities to provide information in a timely and user-friendly manner. They make it possible to provide the user with web-based, target-group specific information through navigation with facets and presents a new possible use of search engines in Technical Documentation. This paper deals with different possibilities on how content can be deployed and accessed for the user. The approaches are implemented in tools that are already on the market to illustrate the possibilities of deployment and access on real-life circumstances. In addition, an outlook is given on what the conceptual implementation of microDocs might look like.

Työelämätaidot ja teknisen viestinnän osaaminen: käytettävyystestaus yritysprojektina

Working life skills as part of university education have been emphasized in recent years. The interface between the workplace and academia has also been in the foreground in technical communication since the early days of the field. One way of enhancing the working life perspective is project-based learning. In 2018, we conducted a project together with two company partners at Tampere University, the aim of which was to test the usability of their user instructions. Usability is an important competence in the field of technical communication. This article focuses on the workplace skills that technical communication students acquired during the project. In addition, the article discusses usability skills that the students gained. The material consists of the students’ course feedback and their final project reports. The analysis reveals that the students gained a wide variety of workplace skills such as project, teamwork and communication skills, and through combining theory and practice, they learned about the complexity of usability and usability testing.

Simulation Rhetoric and Activity Theory: Experiential Learning in Intercultural Simulations

In the field of intercultural business and technical communication, intercultural communication has been a regular topic in curriculum for decades; various teaching approaches exist for developing students’ cultural awareness and helping them achieve a theoretical understanding about the concept of culture, cultural differences, and cultural conflict. But quite often teaching and learning are limited in the classroom context, although it is true that study abroad programs are available for a small group of students. As a result, students do not have enough opportunities to interact with members of other cultures, which limits students’ potentials for gaining intercultural competence. This study explores the rhetorical nature of simulations, defines the perspective of using activity theory as a framework to understand the learning process occurring in simulations, and provides an intercultural simulation example to explain how instructors can incorporate simulations into the business and technical communication curriculum.

ETHNOCENTRISM AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION: STUDY IN WEST BENGAL’S TECHNICAL EDUCATION CENTRES

The growing number of students from outside West Bengal coming into the engineering degree colleges in recent years gave birth to a new challenge in the field of technical communication which is based on ethnocentric biasness of the different regional groups inside the class room. Ethnocentrism is judging another culture on the basis of the values and standards of one’s own culture. Ethnocentric individuals form their opinion of other groups relative to their own ethnic group or culture, especially with concern for language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic contrasts and subgroups serve to define each ethnicity’s distinct cultural identity. The classroom getting divided into different small groups of regional students, the communication between different ethnic and cultural groups are getting narrowed down, causing provincialism to rise among certain groups. The article advocates the adoption of a more harmonious perspective in light of the convergence of cultures and seeks for alternative methods of mixing up of different peer groups inside the class room.

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Hand Collecting and Coding Versus Data-Driven Methods in Technical and Professional Communication Research

Background: Qualitative technical communication research often produces datasets that are too large to manage effectively with hand-coded approaches. Text-mining methods, used carefully, may uncover patterns and provide results for larger datasets that are more easily reproduced and scaled. Research questions: 1. To what degree can hand collection results be replicated by automated data collection? 2. To what degree can hand-coded results be replicated by machine coding? 3. What are the affordances and limitations of each method? Literature review: We introduce the stages of data collection and analysis that researchers typically discuss in the literature, and show how researchers in technical communication and other fields have discussed the affordances and limitations of hand collection and coding versus automated methods throughout each stage. Research methodology: We utilize an existing dataset that was hand-collected and hand-coded. We discuss the collection and coding processes, and demonstrate how they might be replicated with web scraping and machine coding. Results/discussion: We found that web scraping demonstrated an obvious advantage of automated data collection: speed. Machine coding was able to provide comparable outputs to hand coding for certain types of data; for more nuanced and verbally complex data, machine coding was less useful and less reliable. Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of considering the context of a particular project when weighing the affordances and limitations of hand collecting and coding over automated approaches. Ultimately, a mixed-methods approach that relies on a combination of hand coding and automated coding should prove to be the most productive for current and future kinds of technical communication work, in which close attention to the nuances of language is critical, but in which processing large amounts of data would yield significant benefits as well.