"Teaching Technical Communication with Wikis"

Contents

Introduction

Pedagogical Benefits

Practical Benefits

Considerations for Instructors

Works Cited

Pedagogical Benefits

Gurak and Duin note that “the output of technical communicators has shifted from being accessible only within a closed system to being available on the Web” (188), creating a need for instructors to familiarize students with web-based writing practices. Kitalong-Will further suggests, “Technical communication instructors who hope to prepare students for this changing climate need to teach students to write effectively and interact with information in digital media environments” (179).

Teaching online or “going paperless” in face-to-face courses is one way to advance students’ familiarity with digital environments, but if nothing they write is accessible by the public, students may still consider themselves as working in a closed environment, where it is easy for them to adopt a “the teacher is in control of everything, I'm writing only for the teacher mentality” (Garza and Hern). Spinuzzi refers to this phenomenon as “pseudotransactionality,” which occurs when students “concentrate on verbal display at the expense of the brevity that usually characterizes [professional communication]” (296). Rather than feeling secure in the fact that only the teacher will read their work, students who are writing for web-based output are placed in the position of having an audience outside the classroom, which may cause them to take their work more seriously. Of course, not all wikis are necessarily public—some hosting sites allow users to make their sites private—and students who are uncomfortable with putting their own names on their work may be permitted to use pseudonyms.

Wikis may also encourage students to shift their own writing processes because they “invite experimentation at all levels of the writing process. Students create their own structure/processes/paths rather than just simply filling the voids that are so common in other systems such as word processing programs and course management systems” (Garza and Hern). Unlike more common course technologies like Word documents, wikis allow users to create multiple, independent structures (pages) in the site that can be navigated in more than one way, rather than a document with multiple sections that is meant to be navigated linearly.

This invitation to experiment meshes with a pedagogy that encourages students to figure things out on their own. Wilson argues that “the workplace…does not come in a neat package like some assignments [and] teaching our students to view the world as if it does constrains their thinking and their ability to see new possibilities” (87). Furthermore, students should learn to be comfortable with tasks that do not have clear guidelines, and to develop multiple “right answers” to a given communication problem. Kalmbach argues against report-writing activities that encourage students to “perceive the writing to be rote and mechanical: Find the form. Fill in the blanks. Plug, chuck, and forget…instead of seeing writing as part of the learning, knowledge, skills, and strategies that will make them productive members of their prospective profession” (22).

Because there is no exact “formula” for an effective website, students are forced out of a template-driven comfort zone. In fact, wikis encourage students to create their own structures for the documents they produce:

Instead of opening a page and filling the screen and then naming the file, writers have to name the page before it can be created. The act of naming the page means that the writer is not just putting words into a space; the writer is already involved in issues of structure and organization. (Garza and Hern)

The process of creating a wiki therefore asks students to depart from their usual “formulas,” presenting them a greater challenge than typical writing assignments.

The collaborative nature of wikis grants students opportunities to gain experience with group tasks in a digital space. This technology aligns well with a social constructionist pedagogy, which views meaning making as a communal activity with the goal of consensus (Thralls and Blyler). Such projects can serve to develop not only technological literacy, but also social literacy as discussed by Cargile Cook; “For success,” she states, “among the most important of these social skills is the ability to collaborate and work well with others” (11). Assignments that give students an opportunity to work in a group setting—and to be accountable for their participation in that group—serve to develop these social skills among students.