Suggestion for tools in the TW curriculum

[Michele Marques <MarquesM -at- autros -dot- com>]

I've been reading this debate about whether or not to include tools in the
teaching curriculum. The pro-tool people seem to want to pass on general
concepts about tools and to give students specific skills. The anti-tool
people seem to worry that spending time on tools will detract from other
learning (theoretical or subject-matter).

What if we look to the sciences for inspiration? Many science classes have a
"lab" class paired with an academic class. The lab class is for minimal
credit (or no credit but required to pass for passing the academic class)
and provides hands-on experience. The specific labs are not usually directly
on the tools, but require using the tools to get hands-on experience with
theoretical issues. For example, a chemistry lab  might require the students
to use various tools to learn to isolate and identify chemicals. A
psychology statistics class might require a lab in which students use a
statistics program to analyze data (and the first sessions of the lab are
about how to use the application).

If we were to use this approach in a technical writing curriculum, a course
on indexing might be paired with a lab on creating indexes, which would show
the students how to create indexes in MS Word or whatever tool was being
used in the lab. Lab exercises might start off at first as contrived, to
lead students through the process, but the final exercise could also be the
academic course project to index an actual manual or scientific manuscript. 

Labs that promote skills on more basic topics (e.g., using Styles,
numbering, table of contents, etc. in Word, FrameMaker or whatever), could
be paired with first-term courses and would guide the students through some
of the details of their first project. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michele Marques, Technical Communicator
AUTROS Healthcare Solutions, Inc.
marquesm -at- autros -dot- com <mailto:marquesm -at- autros -dot- com> 
 
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