Chapter 7 of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information, 9th ed. (New York: Allyn & Bacon, 1997), discusses strategies for electronic communications. Accompanying the textbook, this chapter of the online instructor manual provides the following:
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- Know the professional uses of e-mail, electronic discussion lists, synchronous communication groups, FTP, and the World Wide Web.
- Know some strategies for use in networked-computer communication.
- Know how to choose from among the communication media, both electronic and non-electronic, to convey a specific message.
- Understand the risks of humor, sarcasm, informality, and haste in electronic communication such as e-mail.
The point of this chapter is to introduce students to computer-networked communication facilities and to address the communication issues surrounding them. Just as team work (collaboration) is an integral part of the workplace, so are e-mail, mailing lists, synchronous discussion groups, FTP, and the World Wide Web. We need to help our students communicate intelligently with these tools as well as with printed documents such as memos, letters, and reports.
Here are some ideas for exploring electronic communication and other issues covered in chapter 7:
- Give the initial quiz. Try giving the quiz at the beginning of your unit on electronic communication as a way of getting discussion going on key aspects of this chapter. When students have completed the quiz and have turned it in, you can go through the answers with them as a group.
- Discuss tone and persona in a sampling of e-mail. Collect e-mail samples that have a wide range of tone and personality—for example, gruff, cutesy, solemn, pompous, officious, new-agey, hyper-formal, sarcastic, and so on. Get your students to collect these samples also. Discuss them in class; have your student articulate the tone and personality they perceive in these samples.
- Using e-mail, interview professionals concerning their e-mail activity. This is exercise 1 in chapter 7. Have students find out how much these professionals engage in e-mail activity per week, why they use e-mail, and what situations in which they would not use e-mail.
- Observe an electronic discussion list for a week. This is textbook exercise 2. Have your students find at least one list related to their majors, follow it for one full week, and catalog the subjects that are discussed on the list. Ask them to consider what sorts of personalities are expressed on the list and whether the list seems like a useful source of information.
- Examine three World Wide Web sites. Have your students locate three web sites related to their major or targeted profession. (This is textbook exercise 3.) This is a good activity to ensure that students are familiar with the information resources on the web. Engineering and science students will find a rich and growing set of resources available on the web. Urge your students to think critically about these sites and the information contained in them—is it detailed, complete, thorough, reliable?
- Experiment with a search engine on the World Wide Web. Have your students search a topic using one of the search engines on the web. Use the techniques shown in textbook exercise 4 for narrowing and qualifying searches. Have your students think critically about the results of these searches.
The following links show you some examples of the kinds of writing discussed in this chapter. These examples are "annotated": explanatory notes are linked to specific points in the examples so that you can see the relation to the concepts discussed in the chapter. You'll need a browser that supports frames, however.
Here are some discussion questions related to this chapter:E-mail (pages 162-166)
- Why is the "send" command such a dangerous temptation in e-mail?
- In what ways is e-mail like and unlike conversation?
- In what ways is an e-mail message easier and harder to read than a hard copy print one?
- In what ways does e-mail force authors to consider the length and design of screens?
Discussion List (pages 166-169)
- What kind of etiquette does a discussion list encourage?
- What happens to those who break the rules?
- What are the advantages of professional discussion lists for learners?
- How do you see discussion lists as a means of including international points of view?
Synchronous Discussion Lists (pages 162-171)
- In what ways is a synchronous discussion more demanding of the attention of participants than participation in a face-to-face meeting?
- What strategies would you use to plan such a discussion productively?
- What do you see as the advantage and the disadvantage of synchronous discussions for international groups? Members?
FTP Sites (pages 173-174)
- In what ways is an FTP site a valuable research tool?
- How would you use an FTP site to organize collaboration between classmates? Between universities? Between international business partners?
WWW Sites (pages 174-182)
- As a user of WWW information, what do you consider the biggest advantages and disadvantages of the medium?
- What design considerations do you consider the most important part of a web page?
- Is navigation, visual impact, or content the most important consideration?
- In what ways does the plan for a web page differ from that of a hardcopy document?
The following are some suggestions for journal entries related to this chapter:E-mail (pages 162-166)
- How personal and direct a medium does e-mail feel to you?
- Is it wise to be as direct in your style in e-mail as in speech?
- What would you consider the risks of international communication on e-mail?
Discussion Lists (pages 166-169)
- How comfortable would you feel as a member of a discussion list? As a "lurker"?
- Is a discussion list an easier medium to take part in than a face-to-face discussion? Why or why not?
Synchronous Discussion Lists (pages 162-171)
- What kinds of patience and attention does a synchronous discussion require? Does the attention seem worth the information?
- What do you consider the chief advantage of this medium?
FTP Sites (pages 173-174)
- How do you see yourself taking advantage of an FTP site?
WWW Sites (pages 174-182)
- How private or how public do you feel a personal web page should be?
- Is the WWW a reliable source of research information for you? Why or why not?
- Of all of these electronic media, which do you feel you could best use to reflect yourself and your abilities for a job interview or presentation?
Here are some ideas for writing projects related to chapter 7, including ideas for collaborative projects:
- Write a memo report analyzing the e-mail samples. Have your students write their own analysis of an e-mail sampling or summarize the discussion in class. (This is workshop activity 2.) Consider holding this writing exercise in class.
To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:
- Manager. Plans meetings, assigns roles, establishes a timetable for activities.
- Facilitator. Conducts a meeting in which team members discuss their responses to the piece of writing.
- Team Members. Each brings an e-mail example and notes about it and takes part in a discussion.
- Scribe. Takes notes on the discussion.
- Editor. Compiles the notes into a report about e-mail in general.
- Write a memo report summarizing the interviews. Have students or student teams summarize what they've learned from the professionals they've interviewed about using e-mail. (This is workshop activity 3.) To enable everyone to get a larger picture, have students orally summarize their findings to the class.
To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:
- Researcher. Locates area professionals willing to be interviewed by students.
- Agenda Planner. Develops survey questions to be used in the interviews.
- Interviewers. Ask students to respond to the interview questions, take notes, write summaries.
- Facilitator. Leads the group in a discussion of interview findings.
- Scribe. Takes notes on the discussion.
- Editor. Compiles the responses and the discussion notes into a memo report for the group.
- Write the memo report analyzing activity on an electronic discussion list. Have students summarize the activity they have observed on an electronic discussion list. (This is workshop activity 4.) As with the interviews, this is a good one for having students present their observations orally to the class.
To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:
- Researcher. Locates a discussion group which the group can sit in on.
- Observers. Sit in on the discussion list, take notes on their observations about the comments, the attitudes, and subject matter they observe.
- Facilitator. Leads the group in a discussion of findings.
- Scribe. Takes notes on the discussion.
- Editor. Compiles the responses and the discussion notes into a memo report for the group or in a set of questions for use in an in-class panel discussion.
- Write a memo report analyzing the three World Wide Web sites. Have students write a memo summarizing their observations on the web sites they've investigated. (This is workshop activity 5.) This is another good opportunity for oral reporting. Students will be interested in finding out as much as they can about resources available on the web.
To turn this into a collaborative project, suggest that student teams organize themselves into these roles:
- Researcher. Locates web sites for group members to observe.
- Observers. Each visits a web site, takes notes on content, order, design.
- Facilitator. Leads the group in a discussion of findings.
- Scribe. Takes notes on the discussion.
- Editor. Compiles the responses and the discussion notes into a memo report for the group or in a set of questions for use in an ion-class panel discussion.
- Simulate a business or professional e-mail exchange. Find a way to have your students send each other e-mail that attempts to do interesting or daring things with tone, personality, and authority. (Consider tying this exercise into chapter 11 on correspondence.) For example, get students to break into teams, create their own companies, decide on their positions within those companies, and, most importantly, put themselves each in a different remote location (Singapore, London, Paris, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Athens . . .). Have your students write e-mail involving situations such as the following:
- a schedule change—the project must be complete two weeks earlier.
- a mistake — vacation time will not be allowed until the project is complete.
- request rejected—your request for leave time has been rejected.
- morale booster—you want to send a humorous, morale-boosting note to the team.
- Have the teams trade their e-mail messages and evaluate the success of these efforts at humor, sarcasm, rah-rah, bad-news conveying, authority-exercising. (If your students do not have e-mail, see the next exercise for some ideas.)
- Simulate an electronic mailing list discussion. Find some way to have your students engage in a mailing list discussion. For example, have them focus on a concept in your course, an upcoming test, or the next writing project. If your students don't have e-mail, you'll have to be creative. For example, you can have a "pre-talkie" class where no one can say anything and students can only communicate by posting e-mail-like message on the board. The scenario is that you the teacher are out of town and your students must fend for themselves in understanding the finer points of the assignment. (If your students don't have e-mail accounts but can get to Internet-connected computers on campus, you can simulate this exchange much better. A friendly webmaster can set up a web page on which students can post messages and view cumulative messages in much the same way an electronic mailing lists works.)
- Simulate a synchronous discussion. You can hold the same activity described in the previous item but in a synchronous facility such as an Internet Relay Chat program or a web chat room. Again, your students need not have their own Internet accounts, as long as they can get to an Internet-connected computer somewhere on campus. Consider holding the same exercise in which the teacher is out of town and students must discuss an upcoming test or writing project. A friendly webmaster can arrange a special chat room for this event as well—and even record the entire proceedings for later analysis in class.
The following point summaries focus on key points in this chapter of Houp/Pearsall/Tebeaux's Reporting Technical Information:
ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATION OVERVIEW |
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CHOOSING A COMMUNICATION MEDIUM |
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