Technical Writing & Maker Literacies: Dr. Christian Worlow's ENGL 2338 And ENGL 3372

TECHNICAL WRITING & MAKER LITERACIES

By Dr. Christian Worlow, UTA English

In teaching courses like these, I adopt a workshop approach. Students read about different genres of technical writing—genres like brochures, instructions, proposals—and I will lecture about and discuss those forms of writing in class. Students then must develop their own instances of those kinds of documents. As the term progresses, we devote considerable class time as students work on iterative drafts, revisions, and edits while I give them feedback and direction. Students will complete many of these projects as members of teams.

WORKING WITH THE PROGRAM

As I considered working with the Maker Literacies (ML) program at UT Arlington, I looked at their list of competencies, and I noted several overlaps with how I teach technical writing. The iterative draft model I use in these courses parallels the iterative design principle in ML: technical writers (as document “makers”) move from concept to thumbnail sketch to prototype to successive drafts, ultimately producing their final draft. Like many crafts, mastering writing requires practice and learning-by-doing, much like ML does.

I also stress several competencies that again parallel the ML program, especially in terms of project management. Indeed, I adapted several of the competencies from ML for my Student Learning Outcomes for my technical writing courses:

• Students demonstrate time management best-practices by keeping project logs and team meeting minutes.
• Students assemble effective teams
  • To collaborate with others
  • To evaluate the costs & benefits of “Doing-it-Together” vs. “Doing-it-Your-self”
  • To delegate responsibilities to those team members best suited to different tasks
  • To solicit advice, knowledge, and specific skills succinctly from [Subject Matter Experts]
• Students employ effective knowledge management practices
  • To communicate clearly with team members and stakeholders
  • To articulate technical and “maker” jargon in clear, concise language
  • To document work clearly

I had my students in these two classes do different, though similar, projects. In ENGL 2338 for their Team Instruction Project (TIP), I assembled my students into teams, and they had to develop documentation—user guides—for the FabLab’s embroidery machine. To do so, these teams had to learn enough about the machine and how to use it in order to articulate for a general, non-STEM, UTA audience how to use the machine themselves. Students worked with Subject Matter Experts: FabLab personnel who already know how to use the machine. I will be sharing the best of these proposed guides with the FabLab for their possible use as documentation for the embroidery machine.

In my ENGL 3372 course, I framed the entire course around developing technical procedures and manuals. The students progressed from simple, brief instructions—instructions via correspondence, flyers, and a small guide—to a full, formal instruction manual. For their Team Instruction Manual Project (TIMP), they worked to develop documentation for the FabLab’s screen-printing apparatus, Screeny McScreenpress. Because of the complexity of the overall process, each team focused on one of four phases of using the screen press:

1. Developing effective vector graphics to use for the vinyl cutter to create a stencil for the screen-printing process
2. Using the vinyl cutter to produce the stencil and to apply it to the screen press
3. Adjusting the registration on the screen press to ensure accurate and successful transfer of ink to garments
4. Applying the ink and cleaning up

These students did so, and their four-part guide will be the first ever documentation the UTA FabLab will have for Screeny McScreenpress.

REFLECTING ON THE PROGRAM

As a proponent of service learning, I recognized that the ML program provided me with an opportunity for my students to do service learning with the FabLab. I have found that students appreciate seeing how their class work can directly and immediately relate to “real world” concerns. That work also gives them something concrete they can point to on their resumes and in cover letters, portfolios, and interviews.

That said, I do plan to adjust how I work with the ML program in the future. Students can encounter profoundly steep learning curves at the FabLab, and the FabLab is still learning how best to ease non-STEM disciplines into taking advantage of their makerspace. During our first tour of the FabLab, many of my ENGL 2338 students—almost all of whom are nursing intended—seemed intimidated and put off by much of what they saw. As they learned more about the equipment and processes they had to master well enough to write about, they did grow more confident. However, FabLab projects demand a time investment from students, and instructors should require regular, graded progress reports from students, including time logs. [Editor’s Note: the FabLab subsequently hired one of Dr. Worlow’s ENGL 2338 students after catching him teaching other FabLab learners how to use the embroidery machine!]

In their own reflections on their experiences, the majority of my students ultimately appreciated the projects. Many of them even expressed how they planned to take advantage of what they learned to do for their own personal projects. My ENGL 3372 students saw the exercise as a crash course, if a beneficial one, in complex document design while also requiring them to work with Subject Matter Experts to learn how to do what they then had to articulate. As my own mentor put it, the best writing conveys complex ideas in simple, clear, concise language. Although I have often put that advice to my literature students, I also stress it to my technical writing students.

I do plan to continue working with the Maker Literacies program, but I plan to be a bit less ambitious with my project goals. To be frank, the FabLab’s equipment is too complex to develop documentation for within the typical timeframe for undergraduate projects. I do have plans for less stressful projects that require students to bridge technical writing principles with iterative design and ML competencies. Those projects I hope will help students recognize the rhetorical nature of shape, design, space, and material, as well as that of text. That outcome and the project management competencies that the program can inculcate strike me as pertinent to almost all disciplines.