Claire Lauer

Professional and Technical Communication in a Web 2.0 World

This article reports on results of a nationwide survey of alumni in professional and technical communication. It presents a series of snapshots from the results, including the types of texts written and valued, where those types are written, with and for whom, and with what technologies. A range of implications are explored.

Visuospatial Thinking in the Professional Writing Classroom

It has been suggested that teaching professional writing students how to think visually can improve their ability to design visual texts. This article extends this suggestion and explores how the ability to think visuospatially influenced students’ success at designing visual texts in a small upper-division class on visual communication. Although all the students received the same instruction, students who demonstrated higher spatial faculties were more successful at developing and designing visual materials than were the other students in the class. This result suggests that the ability to think visuospatially is advantageous for learning how to communicate visually and that teaching students to think visuospatially should be a primary instructional focus to maximize all student learning.

High-Tech Invention Examining the Relationship Between Technology and Idea Generation in the Document Design Process

This article proposes a more complex consideration of the idea-generation stage of the document design process. Survey data collected from multiple sections of graphic design and technical communication classes show that design software and other technology can help students generate solutions to design problems by enabling them to realize design options that they may not have known exist and to adopt a bricolage approach to design that facilitates the process. The author makes several recommendations for how instructors can negotiate the sketching-software divide in their classrooms to ensure that the invention process is optimized for all students.

Online Survey Design and Development: A Janus-Faced Approach

In this article we propose a Janus-faced approach to survey design—an approach that encourages researchers to consider how they can design and implement surveys more effectively using the latest web and database tools. Specifically, this approach encourages researchers to look two ways at once; attending to both the survey interface (client side; what users see) and the database design (server side; what researchers collect) so that researchers can pursue the most dynamic and layered data collection possible while ensuring greater participation and completion rates from respondents. We illustrate the potentials of a Janus-faced approach using a successfully designed and implemented nationwide survey on the writing lives of professional writing alumni. We offer up a series of questions that a researcher will want to consider during each stage of survey development.

Content development as multimodal editing in the web 2.0 workplace

In this paper we argue that mobile, design, content, and social media technologies are fundamentally transforming the role of the content developer in the workplace away from the originator of content and toward the more agile and iterative role of multimodal editor. We present observations from over 100 hours of embedded workplace research shadowing nine different professional communicators to show the importance of viewing content development through the lens of multimodal editing as a way of describing the rapidly iterative, detailed, product-oriented kind of work happening within a variety of constraints (time, genre, technology, etc.). We suggest ways teachers and practitioners should consider shifting our assumptions about the writing/content development process and modifying how we prepare our students for this kind of work in the classroom.

Editorial re-considering research: why we need to adopt a mixed-methods approach to our work

In this editorial, Lauer argues for expanding our methods of research to include a greater emphasis on quantitative and mixed-methods approaches. This expansion will compliment and help frame the qualitative data collection we already prioritize in the fields of writing studies and design. Lauer discusses the benefits of a mixed-methods approach and presents ten recommendations for how scholars, especially those who may be new to quantitative methods, can learn and employ these methods. Lauer suggests that we need to value this more comprehensive approach to data collection in order to better answer the many questions that remain uninvestigated in our field.

Testing the Susceptibility of Users to Deceptive Data Visualizations When Paired with Explanatory Text

In this paper we present the results of an empirical study that analyzed how people understand the data presented to them in deceptive data visualizations when those visualizations are paired with non-deceptive text. This study was administered as an online user survey and was designed to test the extent to which deceptive data visualizations can fool users, even when they are accompanied by a paragraph of accurate text. The study consisted of a basic demographic questionnaire, chart familiarity assessment, and data visualization survey. A total of 256 participants completed the survey and were evenly distributed between a control (non-deceptive) survey and a test (deceptive) survey in which participants were asked to observe a paragraph of text and a data visualization. Participants then answered a question relevant to the observed information to measure how they perceived the information. The results of the study confirmed that deceptive techniques in data visualizations caused participants to misinterpret the information in the deceptive data visualizations even when they were accompanied by accurate explanatory text. Furthermore, certain demographics and comfort levels with chart types were more susceptible to certain types of deceptive techniques. These results highlight the importance of education and awareness in the area of data visualizations to ensure deceptive practices are not utilized on the part of developers and to avoid misinformation on the part of users.

A Review of “Constructing Identities in Online Communities of Practice: A Case Study of Online Learning”

issues associated with observation, including informed consent. Would the individual have declined to be observed if he was aware of issues associated to informed consent? This would have been an appropriate and effective place for Gillham to introduce the topic of research ethics as it applies to observational research. Instead, Gillham holds out until chapter 9 where he devotes an entire chapter to ethics. Although Chapter 9 is comprehensive and well written, readers would be wise to read Chapters 6 and 9 concurrently. Chapters 7 and 8 address the topics of visual ethnography and researcher skills, respectively. Visual ethnography is not often included in general research methods textbooks and, as such, this chapter is intriguing. Whereas the citations in previous chapters are frequently outdated, Gillham references Sarah Pink’s Doing Visual Ethnography (2006), a seminal reference in this area, and surely one that is of great interest to readers. In Chapter 8, Gillham briefly addresses some of the skills and processes associated with observation research, such as taking field notes, organizing field notes, and analyzing field notes. In many ways, Observation Techniques is a gem. Gillham successfully presents a succinct and realistic overview of a wide range of observation methods. He provides numerous real-world examples to illustrate the various methods and writes in an engaging style akin to that of a wise teacher. Whereas some research-methods books are characterized by a degree of technical detail that can intimidate novice researchers, Gillham has a knack for writing in a manner that engages rather than puts off the reader. However, readers should keep in mind that Observation Techniques primarily describes various observation methods. Those in need of a how-to text should supplement their reading.