Teaching Technical Writing: My Thoughts

[George Mena <George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com>]

Some time ago, I wrote an unpublished essay on how I felt technical writing
should be taught. After sharing my thoughts with a techwhirler type who's on
digest here, I decided what I shared with him might be relevant to the
community at large. Following are my key points from that essay:

1) The Virtual Corporation: Rather than try to provide courses on the
virtual corporation, the program may be better suited to working with
companies already having to deal with simultaneous release of product
documentation in various countries planetwide.  At least one concept that
students in paid corporate internships would be learning about would include
the Just-In-Time (JIT) manufacturing process, a process that simply can not
be taught at the university level because universities don't come with
manufacturing plants.  Even the engineering colleges on campuses (at least
nationwide in America) don't have these kinds of facilities, at least, none
that I know of. The primary emphasis would be more on for-profit
organizations, rather than non-profit organizations; non-profits come and go
like the wind.  For-profit organizations at least know where their revenue
streams are coming from; non-profits have to go begging for money all the
time.

2) Media-Relations Training: This concept might be better repackaged as
Technical Interviewing 101.  Using the mock interview process as already
practiced in professional self-help job search groups so as to work on their
job interviewing skills, the student learns how to approach different types
of technical interviews. The student begins with the most basic of technical
interviews in the job interview. He then moves along to how to conduct
various types of technical informational interviews with engineers,
programmers, line operators and bench test technicians (among MANY others)
so as to meet the tech writer's deadline for documenting the product or
service being offered for profit by the company. 

3) Research Methods Training: Putting students alongside of faculty to work
in areas of patent research, marketing research and consumer behaviors gives
the students valuable practical experience in analytical thinking.  More to
the point, it also teaches them how to research complex technical subjects,
a skill they'll need on the job more than tenured faculty ever will.  Call
this course Technology Investigation 101 -- or think of a more clever title
for this important course.

4) Government Agencies and the Private Sector (original input from me): The
Space Coast is home to some of the biggest names in government agencies, not
the least of which is NASA. Companies that do business with NASA to develop
products and services can afford to take their time within contractual
constraints to do their jobs right the first time.  This is typically the
true home of what we generically call "high-tech," rather than the typical
high-tech startup company that has to scurry like mad for venture capital
funding to get their operation up and running.  Most high-tech startups are
market-driven, while most companies contracting with government agencies are
not.

5) Co-Authoring Documents and Software: This effort traditionally involves
quick turnaround times for documentation and software deliverables. I hope a
reasonable price list is ready.  I also hope the people are already in place
to pull this one off.  The co-authoring of documentation puts the university
in direct competition with Kinko's Copies, which is open 24 hours, 7 days a
week, and which never closes.  The co-authoring of software is rarely a
stress-free process.  Debugging any software alone is a pain, as any good
working programmer will testify to.  I would rethink this one outright.

6) Advisory Board / Sponsors: Expand this list of sponsors.  Add folks like
NASA, Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, McDonnell-Douglas, Lockheed-Martin, General
Dynamics and others like them to this list. They're the guys with the money
and the real expertise, especially in effective project management.  My copy
of the proposal doesn't have these folks listed on it.   These companies are
the big guns that should be on the advisory board of sponsors.

7) Contracting 101 (original input from me): A lot of the companies in item
6 of this feedback list (NASA, Boeing, et al) specifically use contract
technical professionals on their high-profile, big-budget projects.  Where
do the big guys find the off-the-shelf technical professionals they need?
And how do the engineering job shops that belong to such organizations as
the National Technical Services Association (NTSA) and the National
Association of Computer Consulting Businesses (NACCB) know who the good guys
are and who the bad guys are in their consultant databases?  And how in the
world can a new tech writing program grad get a technical recruiter from an
engineering job shop to actually take a chance on him or her?  If
Contracting 101 is NOT added to the curriculum, there may as well not even
be a technical writing program at the university.

George Mena
Sr. Technical Writer
ESS Technology, Inc.
48401 Fremont Blvd.
Fremont, CA USA 94538
510-492-1763
e-mail: George -dot- Mena -at- esstech -dot- com


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