Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio Documenting and Reflecting on the Development of Your Communication Skills

Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio n Skills of Effective Technical Communicators n Documenting Your Development of Communication Skills n Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio System n Reflecting on Your Development n Sharing Your Work with Employers

Skills of Effective Technical Communicators n 5 minute writing n What skills do effective technical communicators possess? n What tasks do they customarily perform when they prepare documents? n What kinds of documents do they produce?

Communication n Defined as: An ability to communicate effectively in oral, written, graphical, and visual forms n Specified further by 5 criteria n Identify the readers/audience for a communication task by assessing their technical knowledge and information needs.

Communication n Organize and/or design information to meet readers/audience needs.. n Provide content that is factually correct, supported with evidence, explained with sufficient detail, and properly documented.

Communication n Test readers/audience response to communication tasks to determine how well ideas have been relayed. n Submit work with a minimum of errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and usage.

Documenting Your Development n Opportunities to work on developing your communication skills: Cases, Conferences, Final Report, Oral Reports n Feedback on your work n Electronic system to store your work n Available to prospective employers

Electronic Documentation Method: RosE-Portfolio RosE- Portfolio

Reflecting on Your Development n Industry Standard: Performance Review Forms n General Motors and Cummins Engine n Reflective Statement for Communication

What is a Reflective Statement? n A very important element in portfolio n Helps you assess your accomplishments at Rose n Reflective statement “makes a case” or argues for the relevance of the submitted file to a particular learning objective

Questions that the RS answers n What did I do? n What does it mean? n What have I learned? n How might I do things differently? n Why is it relevant to this objective?

Sample 1 n I wrote this report for my Tech Comm class. It is about recent development in DVD technology. It is a really good paper.

Sample 2 n I wrote this report on DVD technology for the Tech Comm class. In order to plan this report, I had to take into consideration the audience I was writing for. I decided to address my report to junior-level electrical engineering students who are interested in learning more about DVD. For these readers, I included a glossary of terms that...

Sample 2 (continued) n provide a basic vocabulary for DVD. I also thought my readers would be better informed if I included a section on the history of DVD development. In order to determine whether I had met readers’ needs, I tested my document during Peer Review sessions. My peers’ feedback resulted in revisions to Section 3.1 and 4.2.

Sharing Your Work with Employers n Professional Portfolios n Your Job Search this year n Access for Employers n Determined and Controlled by You

Why is RHIT doing this? n Quality control: –Are students achieving desired outcomes? –How can we improve our educational process? n Provide evidence to constituencies: –accreditation & funding agencies –recruiters, prospective students –faculty

Who will be looking at your portfolio? n You n Your faculty advisor n Faculty raters n Technical support team n Anyone else to whom you give permission (e.g., potential employers)

What will faculty raters do with the information? n Report assessment results in aggregate n Make recommendations for improving the educational process n Give feedback to students that were rated

Technical Communication and the RosE-Portfolio n Skills of Effective Technical Communicators n Documenting Your Development of Communication Skills n Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio System n Reflecting on Your Development n Sharing Your Work with Employers