consider Chidsey Dickson's review after this one


A Review of Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication

Service-Learning in Technical and Professional CommunicationMelody Bowdon and J. Blake Scott
NY: Longman, 2003
ISBN 0-205-33560-8    $44.00    pp. 416

Review by Libby Allison
Texas State University – San Marcos
Director of the M.A. with a major in Technical Communication

Introduction
I taught technical writing courses for six years to undergraduate Criminal Justice (CJ) majors in a region with a large federal judiciary system, including a federal courthouse and various prisons. Many CJ majors aspired to be probation and parole officers. One of their assignments was to find a "real" court case and write a probation or parole report for the case. Often waiting until the last semester to take the upper-division required writing course, many had writing problems that stemmed from a lack of practice. They could verbally articulate interpretations of law and legal theory, and describe intricacies of court cases, which they had learned about and discussed in their CJ classes, but could not write clear sentences. Most were stunned to find out how much writing their future jobs would entail. Judges depend on probation and parole reports to determine whether individuals are meeting requirements of their sentences. I worried as both a teacher and a citizen about how many people might be in prison who shouldn’t be and vice versa because of poorly written reports.
        The CJ majors’ reaction to the amount of writing in their future jobs is similar to those of future nurses, engineers, and even teachers (before they do their fieldwork). Noticeably to me and

To "learn from experience" is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becoming trying; an experiment with the world to find out what it is like; the undergoing becomes instruction–discovery of the connection of things.

--John Dewey, Democracy and Education

other faculty, a major "disconnect" was happening between theories these students were learning and practice for what they were going to do. This disconnection obviously had potentially indisputable and disastrous consequences.
        Although writing-across-the-curriculum experts would find the situation unsurprising, I tell this cautionary tale to begin my review of Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication by Melody Bowdon and J. Blake Scott because my experience with CJ students impressed me about the need for experiential learning long before I read the Bowdon and Scott book. According to Bowdon and Scott, "Many college students in engineering, business, pre-medicine, and other technical fields assume that their jobs will not entail much writing, but testimony from advanced professionals consistently suggests this is not the case" (17). My point is that with some more experiential learning within their disciplinary curriculum, perhaps many students would not be so taken aback with writing demands in their careers.
        Aside from its inherent usefulness to the student’s education, service-learning is "also ethical and beneficial to the community" (6), an aspect of service-learning that should not be overlooked. However, considering service-learning within an academic framework, teachers could see that it can be studied and carried out as a nexus of theory with practice, and of writing with technology. It is this nexus, in which I read the service-learning text for a graduate Technical Communication internship course. The title of the course, "Editing the Professional Publication," was dubbed a long time before a technical communication curriculum existed in our department. Working professional students often opt to take the course because performing a conventional internship while they are working full-time is difficult to do. Though the course title stands, the content of the course is mine. It combines service-learning in an internship, where students act as writing and editing consultants, while being required to learn some new technology. I also created this course to be delivered at a distance because I knew these self-directed students in intense work environments would appreciate having greater control over maintaining their own schedules.
        As a result, when reading the Service-Learning text, my questions included the following:

  • Could it provide a window into this nexus by providing students theory and practical application and more useful discussions?
  • Could this text be useful for graduate students who are changing careers or who aspire to be technical writing teachers, as is the case in Technical and Professional Communication programs?
In the spirit of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Communication that promotes itself as providing a connection between theory and practice, the service-learning text delivers on this promise. However, as characteristic of an undergraduate text, the theory is minimal, compared to what is, as a rule, expected in a graduate course. So I read the text with an eye toward how to place it within the context of a graduate course and created a graduate course supplemented with more theoretical readings, more opportunities for workplace service, and open to discussions of technological changes in the workplace. Students were to perform a service for others, and, by the end of the semester, have a large document or documents for their own portfolios.

Target Audience and Features
The book is a very good "How-to-do-service-learning" text, which characterizes it as appropriate for an undergraduate course.
read Dickson's review for another view
The textbook is divided into ten chapters:

  1. What is service-learning?
  2. Service-learning in technical and professional communication
  3. A rhetorical toolbox for technical and professional communication
  4. Choosing your project
  5. Refining your project
  6. Managing your collaboration
  7. Executing your project
  8. Assessing your project
  9. Evaluating your project
  10. Presenting your project.
Some of the specific ways the text is a "How-to" include explaining how to write a letter of inquiry; résumé; proposal for an internship; and a style sheet. The chapters’ sidebars, called, "Other Voices" provide interesting insights to service-learning, as in Chapter 6, where five students comment about collaborative projects at the beginning of the section, "Collaboration Challenges and Strategies for Handling Them" (129). Also, chapters end with "Activities," which students can do individually and/or collaboratively as homework and as in-class assignments. These can be turned in and/or used for class discussion.
        Two of the strongest sections in Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication to me for graduate and undergraduate students are "Analyzing Your Discourse Community: The Discourse Analysis Memo" (151-58) and "Facing Ethical Challenges" (225-31). Teaching students how to analyze the discourse of whatever organization they find themselves in, I think, is one of the most useful parts of this text because, in our quest to educate students to be good writers, we need to be conscious that they are likely going to land in a wide variety of writing and editing jobs, and the facility for adapting is key to their career successes. For example, in a student’s future career, he/she can move from editing brochures for a nonprofit organization to books for a publishing company to content for Web pages for a high-tech company. Each of these requires adjusting to new writing, editing, and designing conventions.
        The "Facing Ethical Challenges" (225-31) section gives students real-life up-front-and-personal scenarios of ethical issues in service-learning, such as what happened when a contact person in an agency deliberately provided students with what they believed was inaccurate information to include in a budget. Bowdon and Scott’s advice was for students to learn as much as they can about how financial matters are handled at the program where they worked, express their concerns to their contact person, and keep their instructor informed about the progress of the project. Students, no matter what level, can learn from these less-than-heartening situations.
        From a theoretical perspective, the text’s strengths are in situating technical and professional communication activities as rhetorical processes, bringing in concepts, such as ethos, pathos, and logos, and the five canons of classical rhetoric, as well as presenting collaboration and visual design theories.
read Dickson's reflections on these intersections
Chapter One of the text, for instance, discusses three models of service-learning. In model 1, students do nonwriting work for nonprofit agencies and write about this work. In model 2, students study some kind of social theme like literacy, and perform a service related to the theme such as tutoring, and then write a paper tying their research in with their experience. And in model 3, "The Stanford Model," students write as their community service rather than about their service. This is the model Bowden and Scott contend is "the most appropriate for a writing course, as it most clearly connects students’ service to the concepts of the course" (4). It is the model I chose for my class. The text’s concentration on teaching good writing practice is also a major strength. The authors intersperse grammar, punctuation, and style lessons within the frameworks of various writing genres including memos, résumés, and reports. It is a valuable way to show students how attention to detail makes for clearer writing.
        In defining what is and what is not service-learning in a technical and professional course, the authors say, in their model, students doing clerical work in an agency or driving a van for a client outing would not constitute service-learning. An appropriate service-learning activity would be compiling a manual for clerical volunteers in an agency or designing training materials for the use of office equipment. In other words, service-learning in technical and professional writing should mean students become "unpaid writing consultants"(7) for an organization by taking on an activity requiring writing, editing, and/or designing paper or online documents.

Needs More Relevant Activities for Grad Courses
Unlike undergraduate technical and professional writing courses, which are often service courses for students in a wide-range of disciplines, the student population of technical and professional communication graduate courses tends to fall into these groups: students desiring to become teachers of technical and professional writing (community college or university); students wanting to become technical and professional communicators; and students who already professional communicators, wanting to learn more and get more credentials. While graduate students, especially those in the throes of a career change, need as much of a "how-to-do service-learning" as undergraduates, in considering this text for a graduate course, teachers should be ready to augment it with other articles and activities.
        For instance, the book has only a brief section on service-learning within a business environment (24). In my course, because a number of graduate students are already busy professionals and trying to go to school, their service-learning experience can involve being a "writing and editing consultant" for a project in their own workplace, as long as it is different from anything they would otherwise be doing. For other students, they could proceed in more conventional types of service-learning settings like nonprofits.
        The appendices at the end of the text offer examples of types of actual service-learning projects: developing a volunteer handbook for the Alachua County Humane Society; getting funding for the Alachua County Habitat for Humanity; and providing marketing materials for the University of Central Florida’s dance marathon for the Greater Orlando Children’s Miracle Network (291-400). I think these examples in general are effective, but to address nontraditional-aged and professional students, especially those in a graduate technical and professional communication curriculum, the book needs more variety and complexity of examples like ones from workplace settings.

Needs More In-Depth Theoretical and Historical Information for Grad Courses
Though the textbook does a good job of showing the underpinnings of the field’s rhetorical and theoretical background and application for undergraduates, to graduate faculty, it may be too reductive, presenting some theoretical notions without providing in-depth readings and analyses. Each chapter’s "Works Cited" has original sources from the chapter, which can be a starting point for graduate supplemental reading, but graduate faculty will probably want to offer additional sources like these for students to read.
        I suggest, though, that the book’s largest gap is a historical perspective on service-learning that would help ground graduate students in the field and help them become knowledgeable about the threads of service-learning, as we know it today. I believe, without some historical information, students could think service-learning is routinely found in curricula, which we know is far from accurate, and it is especially important for those who may be headed for teaching careers to appreciate its roots. The textbook sketchily says that service-learning arose to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s (2-4) but mostly drops the matter there.
        I think the work of educational philosopher John Dewey is especially relevant to service-learning today and should be included in students’ readings. Although Dewey focused on childhood education and how applied learning teaches the values of democracy, he is considered a pioneer in connecting applied learning with education at-large. Moreover, Dewey’s work can be seen in relation to expressive, cognitive, and social constructive theories and writing practices, as taxonomized in James Berlin’s landmark piece, "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." Supplementing a graduate course with the Berlin article and others on the history, theory, pedagogy, and practice of service-learning will help new graduate students understand how service-learning and the Service-Learning textbook fit into the discipline of writing and of technology and provide talking points in classes.
        Influenced by Emerson, Dewey’s ties to the Transcendentalists are relevant to discussions of reflective writing and expressivism. Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication suggests ways for students to do reflective writing or "deliberative writing," as the authors like to call it, because it is to move students beyond passive contemplation. Students can do deliberative writing in their field journals, an ongoing record of a student’s work on a project (146-49), and within the heuristic at the end of Chapter 9 on "Evaluating Your Report," which is for students to "deliberate critically about your service-learning experience and its effects, including its effects on you" (271-73).
        Individual intellectual development, a tenet of cognitivistic ideology, is also evident in Dewey’s work. Martin Bickman, for instance, in Minding American Education: Reclaiming the Tradition of Active Learning conveys the connection between experiential learning and intellectual development, based on Deweyan influence in the American education system. "The relation between conceptual thought and immediate experience was not abstract or external for Dewey, but the central issue in his own intellectual history" (95), writes Bickman. And finally, Dewey's philosophy provides a perspective through which to discuss cultural and socially constructive writing, as Charles Bazerman recognizes:

    Dewey among others counseled sensitivity towards the way individuals act and develop within social interactions and settings. He also, however, strongly believed in the value of accumulated wisdom and experience of the community in providing tools for addressing the practical problems of living and creating a rich environment and resource for each individual’s development. He also understood that students were not individuals but members of immediate and larger communities in which they developed identities and toward which they learned responsibilities and made contributions. (444)
Three other articles that provide related historical background are Julia Garbus’ "Service-Learning, 1902," published in College English; "Addams, Day, and Dewey: The Emergence of Community Service in American Culture" by Keith Morton and John Saltmarsh, and Dwight E. Giles, Jr. and Janet Eyler’s "The Theoretical Roots of Service-Learning in John Dewey: Toward a Theory of Service-Learning" from the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning.

Needs More Technological Supplements for Grad Students
For those graduate students planning careers in professional and technical communication or who are already professional communicators, Service-Learning in Professional and Technical Communication needs to be beefed up with discussions of the technological aspects of the workplace environment. While the book does a good job at presenting information on Web page development, some desktop publishing, and the like, it could use, for example, at least a brief discussion on Instant Messenging, now fast overtaking e-mail as the means of daily "conversation"; a brief section on telecommuting, the way many today are going about working; and especially a section on Online Help. Albeit it is unlikely many students will have access to online help software, they could at least become familiar with its purpose, which is an increasingly important part of a technical communication career.
        Realizing that it is difficult, if not impossible, for conventional publishers to keep up with fast-paced technology, readers would be helped if there was a Web site as the Instructor’s Manual.
Dickson concurs
Allyn and Bacon offers a companion book, Building Bridges: The Allyn & Bacon Student Guide to Service-Learning by Doris M. Hamner, which, again, is directed to beginning students; however, I am a believer in practicing technology and have built in Blackboard, the Web-based course program, multimedia sound clips, PowerPoint slides, discussion forums, etc. Because all faculty and students do not have access to Blackboard or WebCT, another Web-based course program is Yahoo Instant Messenger that could allow faculty and students to participate in online chats and forums as well as find and share resources on current technological trends. For more information, see my collection of such useful sites.


 

Works Cited

Bazerman, Martin, and David Russell, eds. Writing Selves/Writing Societies: Research from Activity Perspectives. Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse on Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2002. Available at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/selves_societies.

Berlin, James A. "Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class." College English 50.5 (1988): 477-94.

Bickman, Martin. Minding American Education: Reclaiming the Tradition of Active Learning. NY: Teachers College P, 2003.

Dewey, John. Democracy and Education. NY: Macmillan, 1916: 164.

Giles Dwight E., Jr. and Janet Eyler. "The Theoretical Roots of Service-Learning in John Dewey: Toward a Theory of Service-Learning." The Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 1 (1994): 77-85.

Garbus, Julia. "Service-Learning, 1902." College English 64.5 (May 2002): 547-65.

Hamner, Doris M. Building Bridges: The Allyn & Bacon Student Guide to Service-Learning. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2002.

Morton, Keith, and John Saltmarsh. "Addams, Day, and Dewey: The Emergence of Community Service in American Culture." Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning 4 (1997): 137-49.