Teaching Tech Comm Class Notes: Week 1

Every week in my summer class we write up notes on the readings along with some comments or questions.  We are also supposed to write out and iterate on a teaching philosophy statement. I'll be posting my weekly notes here, along with further ruminations where appropriate.

Later today I hope to perform another content update in the resources section focusing more on TRPG scholarship.

Week 1:

Allen:  The Case Against Defining Technical Writing

Annotation:  Allen reviews previous attempts at defining technical writing and dismisses each in turn, from content-dependent definitions to goal-based.  He does seem to have some sympathy for goal-based definitions but ultimately dismisses them for potentially including fields that he does not consider to be part of the technical communication portfolio.  

Comment/Question: Allen seems to be held back by not wanting to step on the toes of journalism and advertising;  I feel a definition of technical communication could be reached if you weren't afraid to include them.   


Miller: What's Practical About Technical Writing

Annotation: Miller ruminates on what it means to be practical in the context of technical writing, focusing on how the field mingles between academic and professional life. 

Comment/Question: I really liked that he pointed out we may need to revisit ancient wisdom when said ancient wisdom applied when having slaves was honorable and working for a living wasn't. 
 

Bowden and Scott: A Rhetorical Toolbox for Technical and Professional Communication

Annotation:  This piece addresses how rhetorical theory ais a fundamental component of technical and writing communication. It also gives some background on what rhetorical theory is and how it works. 

Comment/Question: I feel like an excellent area for research would be a comparison of the way companies communicate via Kickstarter with their backers and how non-Kickstarter companies communicate with customers in terms of their ethos.  Corporate messaging seems so inauthentic, but on Kickstarter the connection and feedback from the community tends to mitigate this somewhat. 


Week 1 iteration of teaching philosophy:

Who is the audience?

Currently I'm imagining the audience as peers I am attempting to explain my teaching philosophy to.  Not necessarily our class, but amorphous friends and colleagues.

What kind of organizational structure is to be used? 

First, I would likely state what I'm trying to accomplish by teaching.  Even though it seems self-evident, stepping back and reexamining my reasons should help to frame my approach.  Then, I would segue into a couple of concrete examples and describe how they are exemplars of my philosophy.  I would finish with something aspirational, where I hope to go in the future or further develop what I've done.  I feel like the combination of framing, concrete examples and chronological progression should give a pretty good overview of what my teaching philosophy is all about.

How might it be remediated?

A documentary video format might be interesting.  If I had the choice I'd like it to be narrated by a reasonable Werner Herzog impersonator.  Alternatively, I could frame the teaching philosophy statement as a lesson on itself or a study into the practice and effectiveness of such statements.

Broadly Applicable Quote from Tonight's Readings

"...true culture comes not from turning aside to other interests as higher, but from so conceving their special work that it will be worthy of life' devotion."

Samuel Chandler Earle, "English in the Engineering School at Tufts College."

At the intersection of cookbooks and lycanthropy.

I have an easier time addressing the existential questions of definition in technical writing than figuring out a setting-appropriate antagonist for werewolves and I can only have a conversation about this state of affairs with a small handful of people.

First class: ENGH 824

In less than a week I'm going to begin the first class in my program, titled "Teaching Technical Communication."  I have been endlessly amused by the fact that I'm beginning my program by learning how to teach it.

Since it's summer and an abbreviated session, this means that for the duration it will be roughly equivalent to taking two classes at once while I work.  If it turns out I can hack it, after taking one class in the Fall I'll probably go full-time in the Spring.  I've been comparing notes with some of my coworkers, and they know folks who have worked full time, did a full time PhD and had kids.  My fiancé and I are planning to have kids, but hopefully not until I finish.

I'm a bit behind on organizing my research here, mostly due to sloth.  Today I'm in the process of doing a big update relating to genre and genre theory.  One of the benefits of organization is the realization that the oldest reference to genre that I had previously been exposed to ("Genre as Social Action") is not as far back as one can go.

Most of my program will consist of squinting at Cillian Murphy.

And this is one of the many reasons citation is important.  I was able to hop from Miller to Harrell and Linkugel and from Harrell and Linkugel to Edwin Black.  I'm stopped there, though, until I can pull it from the library and see how much further back I can go.  In the meantime I'll be including the works on genre I've already had some exposure to.





Citations for the pieces mentioned:

Black, Edwin. Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method. New York: Macmillan, 1965. Print.

Harrell, Jackson, and Wil A. Linkugel. "On Rhetorical Genre: An Organizing Perspective." Philosophy & Rhetoric 11.4 (1978): 262-281. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 27 May 2015

Miller, Carolyn R. "Genre As Social Action." Quarterly Journal Of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151-167. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 27 May 2015

Anatomy of a TRPG Draft

I like charts.

This is a rough sketch I came up with to illustrate how TRPG play occurs.  It's easy for me to forget that when I throw a game together it's not necessarily put together in a fashion that the developer or my players intend.  Everybody's expectations get modified through actual play as they realize what is working for them, what isn't, and what's different from what they had conceptualized as the game itself.

Also, this isn't necessarily the straight line I depicted here.  I might revise this to show where reciprocal shaping occurs; player dynamics during play change the way a GM envisions and executes the game and the player's mediation thereof.

Incidentally, this process of social shaping of a communicative medium is also the way genres get developed.

How did I get here, and why am I covered with words?

Applying to graduate school is terrifying, but not in a fun "the dead girl is crawling out of my TV" kind of way.  It's much more of the vague terror that promising yourself you'll keep your ego out of it can't solve.

At first I didn't remember feeling as insecure when applying to graduate programs after getting my Bachelor's degree, but after a little introspection I discovered I just had a healthy amount of mental scar tissue over that part of my life.  I imagine the salve of time is what keeps many of us going.

The point is that I did not have nearly as much on the line with this application as I have had with applications previous.  In spite of that, I was still on tender-hooks throughout the process even though my continued livelihood wasn't dependent on it succeeding.  It was just something I really wanted to do, and when you have to subject yourself to a value judgment by others it is difficult to stay impersonal about it.

As I write this I realize I'm working backward, in a way.  My road to the program didn't begin ex nihlo from the moment I pressed the "submit" button on the Mason application screen.  It actually began with friends, colleagues and mentors gently prodding me in the direction of technical communication studies.  I had a decent idea of what it was and what aspects of it I found interesting, but there wasn't anything I had been aware of that I felt could really keep me hooked and productive through a program.

Otherwise I would basically just be there for the terminal degree, which would be terrible for everyone involved.  That's even assuming that I made it past the application process.  I do not need that kind of torture and they do not need that kind of student.

It wasn't until an astute colleague pointed out that Dr. Eyman was doing significant work with video games that inspiration struck.  If Dr. Eyman was doing video games, why couldn't I study tabletop roleplaying games?  However, as we all know...

I wanted to take a class first to make sure I could hack it, so I registered as a non-degree student in the 501 intro class for the master's program.  I was extremely fortunate to have Dr. Heidi Lawrence as my instructor; most of my success thus far can be attributed to the work I did in that class.  I was able to build the basis for the writing sample I would submit in 501, and Dr. Lawrence was very helpful in giving me feedback.  From what I learned in 501, I also figured that leveraging my previous work with social systems in my MSW would be helpful, and it turned out that it was.

I was also lucky that a student Society for Technical Communications group led by Dr. Lawrence was beginning on campus, which gave me additional opportunities to work with and learn from other students in both the masters and PhD programs here.

During the semester I approached Dr. Eyman to talk about the field and his studies.  He was able to direct me to Immersive Gameplay and that helped me get a start in the area of scholarship I am hoping to pursue.  He also generously gave me some pointers on my personal goal statement.

So that's how I got here.  I found a subject I was passionate about in a field I was interested in, developed a working proficiency with the subject matter while bringing in related skills I had already developed.  I also reached out to faculty who were able to provide insights into how my thoughts might fit into the program and how to best craft the case for what value that scholarship might bring.

I anticipate this will be an extremely demanding program and I'm trying to bring the very best of my faculties to bear.  That includes things like organizing my thoughts/research (blog!) and getting into shape; exercise increases blood flow, and I'll need all the blood that I can stuff into my brain for this.

The Litany

Hello!  I should probably explain who I am and what I'm up to.

I'm Matt, and I'm pursuing a PhD in Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University.  I also happen to work here as an advisor in the School of Policy, Government and International Affairs.  I have a Masters degree in Social Work and a Bachelor's degree in English (Creative Writing) and Psychology.

For all intents and purposes I want to be a wizard and/or Indiana Jones.  Writing and Rhetoric is close enough.

My primary object of inquiry is the field of tabletop roleplaying games (TRPGs).  There's a fair amount of fascinating scholarship in this area by a number of different disciplines, making an interdisciplinary program like Writing and Rhetoric an extremely compelling method of pursuing scholarship into both dragons and dungeons.

I also plan to study the rhetorics of video games.  There's a fair amount of scholarly and practical overlap with TRPGs, but let's face it: I'm basically choosing my lines of inquiry based on the presumption that the literature might benefit from the fact that I am a huge nerd.  I'm also very fortunate that my program has not one, but two scholars specializing in this area: Dr. Eyman and Dr. Holmes.

The primary purpose of this blog is a tool for me to help organize and focus the work I have done and will be doing.  The secondary purpose is to make resources I find easily available to others who want to do something similar.  The tertiary purpose is to use this blog to appear like a real adult human scholar who can do real scholarly things like research blogs and networks and citing Clay Spinuzzi.

Below, you'll find a corpus of sources that I've organized based on my ongoing research, as well as my notes on what is interesting and fun about them.  This post will be edited with updates as I move along.

Last Update:  June 1st, 2015


If you use any of this for some of your own work, please let me know so I can get all giddy and excited that somebody actually cited something I did!

Glossary of Jargon

Genre:  A pattern of socially-shaped and agreed upon communication.  A genre is something like a memo or a meeting that follows particular rules within a given setting.  It is shaped by and in returns shapes the organization that it 'originates' from (though 'origin' might not be the right word, given that something like a memo has been passed down from generation to generation and between institutions for most of recorded history).

Genre System:  A genre system is a bunch of genres working together to produce a thing.   Bazerman (1994) uses the excellent example of patents!  A patent is a whole collection of different kinds of discourses bundled together (like plans, judicial proceedings, etc.) to produce a new thing. It is also worth noting that these systems are often very dependent on sequencing and timing.  Coupling the concept of genre systems with other paradigms of information systems might prove fruitful.

Reflexivity: When you apply the models you use on the subjects for your research on your study (or field of study) itself.  It's basically a form of introspection.  The term is also occasionally used for any form of  introspection the research authors undertake.

Scholarly Sources: TRPGs and Video Games

Immersive Gameplay

Torner, Evan, and William J. White. Immersive Gameplay Essays on Participatory Media and Role-Playing. Jefferson: McFarland, 2012.

Foundational to my start as a scholar in this field.  Also very useful if one is tackling the idea of 'immersion' in gaming, which is often one of the goals of TRPGs and video games (I'm guessing because the general idea is escapism).  Has some good TRPG scholarly jargon to throw around.  Also advocates for reflexivity in TRPG research, which is a principle I like.  For my purposes, this work is also super exciting in the fact that it has a specific call to action for research involving the organizational characteristics and discourses involved in TRPG publication.

Scholarly Sources: Genres and Genre Systems

Bazerman, C. 1994. Systems of Genres and the enactment of social intentions. Genre and
the New Rhetoric, A. Freedman and P. Medway, Eds., Taylor & Francis, London 79-101.

Bazerman demonstrates the concept of genre systems through an investigation of late 19th century U.S. patent law and procedures. Many of the genres he presents are dependent upon others: laws are brought about through “proceedings, negotiations, letters, studies”. He demonstrates how a law or a patent is dependent not only on other genres, but on the sequence and timing with which those genres are employed. Patents are useful as the system that generates patents is made up of groups of supporting documents without which the patent itself could not exist. This article is particularly useful for reference as it is the origination of the genre system model. Also might be useful if I ever decide to do anything regarding patent reform.




Miller, Carolyn R. "Genre As Social Action." Quarterly Journal Of Speech 70.2 (1984): 151-167. Communication & Mass Media Complete. Web. 27 May 2015.

Miller points out that "a genre is not just a pattern of forms or even a method of achieving our own ends", but is rather an always evolving method by which groups produce a pattern discourse and is distinct from form, at least in the way that Severus Snape is one specific expression of House Slytherin.

It's my research blog, so I get as much Alan Rickman as I want.

She also points out it's "the rhetorical means for mediating private intentions and social exigence"; it's a vehicle of communication that the group has decided is appropriate for that particular kind of communication.