Community

Our profession understands the importance of peer communication and exchange of practitioner knowledge. When technical communicators, educators, or program directors get together, we frequently discuss what we value and teach. We engage in conversations that reflect our mutual interest in and commitment to assessment practices. As academics and practitioners in technical communication, we are drawn to further understanding how Web technologies can contribute to research productivity and enrich our sense of community.

The web-based research model presented here is intended to bring us together as a community. Through the Community Assessment Blog, for example, we can create a dynamic forum where we generate new knowledge collaboratively. Discussions provide a mechanism not only for sharing our individual work but also creating and voicing new insights that are only possible when we tap the power of our combined intellectual resources. As theorist James R. Taylor tells us, “We collectively know not just something more, but something different from what any of us individually knows” .

In Context
Collaborative efforts at NJIT have resulted in over two decades of research on outcomes assessment. Continuing in an assessment tradition designed to allow maximum construct representation, Coppola described a case study that demonstrated a comprehensive sense of validity in a technical communication service course assessment by focusing on articulated communication tasks and community involvement. At the present writing, this tradition of assessment has been maintained on the undergraduate level, a testament to the transferability of the model. At the graduate level, a series of research presentations on program assessment documents continuing efforts.

We invite CPTSC members to provide us with their own narratives of community building so that we may expand our community.

Suggested Resources on Community

Feenberg, Andrew, and Darien Barney, eds. Community in the Digital Age: Philosophy and Practice. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

Johnson, Carol, et al. College Writing Assessment: Online Community & Resources. 8 July 2008 < http://cwa.njit.edu/index.htm>.

Purvis, Alan C. The Web of Text and the Web of God: An Essay on the Third Information Transformation. New York: Guilford, 1998.

Tinder, Glenn.  Community: Reflections on a Tragic Ideal.  Baton Rouge: LSU P, 1980.

Wenger, Etienne, Richard McDermott, and William M. Snyder.  A Guide to Managing Knowledge: Cultivating Communities of Practice. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School P, 2002.

1Nancy W. Coppola and Norbert Elliot, “Assessment of Graduate Programs in Technical Communication: A Relational Model, “Forthcoming in Assessment in Technical and Professional Communication,” eds. Margaret Hundleby and Jo Allen, Baywood’s Technical Communication Series, ed. Charles H. Side (Amityville: Baywood) 168 .

2James R. Taylor, “The Other Side of Rationality: Socially Distributed Cognition,” Management Communication Quarterly Nov. 1999: 317-326.

3N. Elliot, M. Kilduff, and R. Lynch, “The assessment of technical writing: A case study,” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 24(1994): 19-36.

4N.W. Coppola, “Setting the discourse community: Tasks and assessment for the new technical communication service course,” Technical Communication Quarterly  8(1999): 249-267.   

5C. Johnson, “A Decade of Research: Assessing Change in the Technical Communication Classroom Using Online Portfolios,” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 36.4(2006): 413-31. and C. Johnson, “The Analytic Assessment of Online Portfolios in Undergraduate Technical Communication: A Model,” Journal of Engineering Education  95.4(2006): 279-287.

6See N. W. Coppola, “Writing Assessment: A Heuristic for Graduate Student Success,” paper presented at the 56th annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, San Francisco, CA, Mar. 2005.; N. W. Coppola, ‘”Assessing Graduate Writing in a Visual Age: Towards Core Competencies,” in N. Elliot (Session Chair). "In Search of Meaning: A Community Model for Program Assessment", paper presented at the 57th Annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, Chicago, IL, Mar. 2006.; N.W. Coppola,  N. Elliot, “A Behavioral Framework for Assessing Graduate Technical Communication Programs,” paper presented at the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, Oct. 2003, 25 Aug. 2008, from <http://www.cptsc.org/proceedings/2003/program_panels.htm>; N.W. Coppola & N. Elliot, “Towards Formative Assessment: Valuing Different Voices,” paper presented at the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication, Oct. 2004, 25 Aug. 2008, from <http://www.cptsc.org/proceedings/2004/proceedings04_rev.pdf>;  N.W. Coppola, N. Elliot, “A Community Research Model for Assessment of Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication,” San Francisco State University, CA, Oct. 2006.; N.W. Coppola, N. Elliot, T. Barker, Locke Carter, & M. Kimball, “Re(building) Technical Communication as a Research Discipline: A Community Model for Program Assessment,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing, New York, NY, Mar. 2007; N. Elliot, “Standards for Writing Assessment and the Construction of Validity Evidence,” Conference on College Composition and Communication. New Orleans, LA. Apr. 3, 2008.