The divide between academic research and industry practice has been an ongoing challenge in the field of technical communication. One goal towards bridging this gap is to align the content and objectives of technical communication classrooms with the realities of industry. Studies have been conducted representing practitioner perspectives, technical communication journals, and technical communication pedagogy. While researchers have sought to understand the state of the field by engaging with practitioners, developing topic surveys that are representative of the curriculum of technical writing courses is a challenge.
In this session, we will present findings from our two-part study of the most common technical communication topics: a corpus-driven keyword frequency analysis and a survey of professionals. The findings from both the keyword analysis and the survey can help educators make informed decisions about which subjects, skills, genres, and tools should be addressed to align their course content with broader practices.
June 9 @ 11:00
11:00
Bremen Vance, Samantha Cosgrove