Technical Writing

E235|Pierce College|SP19

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Week 8

by Jason Loan - 28 May 2019

Big Picture

This week, our goal is to develop an idea for the project work we will do to in the remainder of the quarter.

My hope is that the primary drimving force for the work you choose to do over the next three weeks will be – what do you still want to learn or get out of the class?

The first phase of this week’s work, then is to revisit you your research logs and self-assessments and use these to help inform the choices you make going forward.

Project Possibilities

I have a couple of options for projects that I would encourage you to take up.

Path 1: Help me build an Open (OER) Technical Writing Textbook

A project I would like some help with is to produce the initial draft of an OER Textbook that could be used both as a project and as a resource for future iterations of this course.

Your work would essentially involve some variation of this:

  1. In collaboration with me, we would also research OER textbooks, and develop an initial template for for our textbook, including templates for individual chapters. This would also include researching possible publication platforms.
  2. Select a genre of technical writing that you would like to learn something about or that you think future students might want to learn. For example, in this course we have worked with the genres analytical reports and tutorials. What other genres do you have an interest in?
  3. Research this genre. What are it’s purposes? Common characteristics and features?, etc.
  4. Produce an initial draft of a chapter for the textbook. At this stage of the project, I imagine that this would be a chapter that e235 students in the Fall could take up and further develop.

As you think about what you want to work in our remaining time together, I would like you to spend some time this week looking into Open Educational Resources (OER). Start with the Open Pedagogy Notebook, then do some research/browsing of your own.

I see the above project as the starting point of a long-term open-pedagogy project in e235 at Pierce. I hope you’re interested in helping me get this started.

Path 2: Continue to help me develop PierceHacker.

Having been immersed in developing some initial drafts of resources for PierceHacker, and if this project interests you, we would work together to develop the project further develop this project.

This work would potentially include:

  1. Developing initial versions of project resources that will faciliate future contributions to the project.
  2. Working on the design of the project site.
  3. Developing initial versions of additional project resources, For example, tech related blog posts, in-person workshops, etc.

If this path interest you, I would like you to spend some time this week looking at the two projects that have inspired PiereHaker – The Programming Historian and ProfHacker.

What do these projects do well that PierceHacker isn’t yet doing or could do better? Taking these as models, how do we move PierceHacker foward?

Like the OER project sketched out above, I also view PierceHacker as an “open pedagogy” project.

Path 3 – Design your own project

While I think there is much to learn in the two paths outlined above, and much flexibility in what we might take away from that work in light of our individual educational goals, I also want to offer you the possibility of designing your own project.

The basic criteria for this project would be:

  1. It should be rooted in the intersection of your own personal learning goals and the course outcomes.
  2. It should involve a multi-phased process. For example, the project would include a research phase, a drafting phase, a sharing/feedback/revision phase.

Key here is asking your self – what would you still like to learn, to get out of the class? There’s a chance, but that Paths 1 and 2 can help you do this; however, there may be another avenue, and I am happy to help you work through this.

So, again, key to your work this week is to go back and review your previous self-assessments and research logs.

This week’s log

Use this week’s log to consider each of the paths I’ve laid out.

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