Selected Essays by Tracy Bridgeford
Programmatic Perspectives , 2012
Recent Books by Tracy Bridgeford
This collection explores ideas related to forging effective academia-industry relationships and p... more This collection explores ideas related to forging effective academia-industry relationships and partnerships so members of the field can begin a dialogue designed to foster communication and collaboration among academics and industry practitioners in technical communication. To address the various factors that can affect such interactions, the contributions in this collection represent a broad range of approaches that technical communicators can use to establish effective academy-industry partnerships and relationships in relation to an area of central interest to both: education. The 11 chapters thus present different perspectives on and ideas for achieving this goal. In so doing, the contributors discuss programmatic concerns, workplace contexts, outreach programs, and research and writing. The result is a text that examines different general contexts in which academia-industry relationships and partnerships can be established and maintained. It also provides readers with a reference for exploring such interactions.
Papers by Tracy Bridgeford
Editing in the Modern Classroom, 2019
Co-edited by Tracy Bridgeford, UNO faculty member. Chapter 7: Story Time: Teaching Technical Comm... more Co-edited by Tracy Bridgeford, UNO faculty member. Chapter 7: Story Time: Teaching Technical Communication as a Narrative Way of Knowing, authored by Tracy Bridgeford. Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication offers a variety of activities, projects, and approaches to energize pedagogy in technical communication and to provide a constructive critique of current practice. A practical collection, the approaches recommended here are readily adaptable to a range of technological and institutional contexts, as well as being theoretically grounded and pedagogically sound. Throughout the collection, its editors and contributors demonstrate the importance of critically engaging students through creative and innovative pedagogies. Programs in technical writing, technical communication, and-or professional communication have recently grown in enrollment as the demand among employers for formally prepared technical writers and editors has grown. In response, scholarly treatmen...
Co-edited by Tracy Bridgeford, UNO faculty member. Chapter 7: Story Time: Teaching Technical Comm... more Co-edited by Tracy Bridgeford, UNO faculty member. Chapter 7: Story Time: Teaching Technical Communication as a Narrative Way of Knowing, authored by Tracy Bridgeford. Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication offers a variety of activities, projects, and approaches to energize pedagogy in technical communication and to provide a constructive critique of current practice. A practical collection, the approaches recommended here are readily adaptable to a range of technological and institutional contexts, as well as being theoretically grounded and pedagogically sound. Throughout the collection, its editors and contributors demonstrate the importance of critically engaging students through creative and innovative pedagogies. Programs in technical writing, technical communication, and-or professional communication have recently grown in enrollment as the demand among employers for formally prepared technical writers and editors has grown. In response, scholarly treatmen...
The list of chapters in this book demonstrates the breadth of our field of professional and techn... more The list of chapters in this book demonstrates the breadth of our field of professional and technical communication (PTC). Chapters on definitions and instructions are presented alongside ones on content management and information design. Some of these chapters have been included in textbooks for generations; some are relatively new. But all have at least one thing in common: they ask you to teach students how to use symbolic language in specific contexts. This focus on how people use symbols, whether the symbols are gestures, pictures, or words on a page or screen, to influence perceptions, beliefs, behavior, or even action or activities is a focus on rhetoric. A presupposition of rhetoric is that a rhetorical situation exists involving an audience, an exigence relevant to both the audience and the speaker/writer/designer, and constraints. Beginning your semester with a focus on rhetoric and rhetorical analysis may seem odd or might appear to be a tough "sell," particularly to students coming from engineering or science where the term rhetoric, if used, often has the pejorative or diminutive connotation of "mere rhetoric." 1 Although many students have had some introductory writing course in composition, much of that knowledge has been pushed way back in their memories as they have struggled to learn the principles and application of those principles in their chosen fields of mechanical engineering, biochemistry, or plant pathology (to name a few of the disciplines that often require PTC courses). For that reason, a number of beginning teachers shy away from rhetoric and choose what seems to be an easier path: immediately building a bridge to the students' disciplinary knowledge-writing instructions, creating reports, drafting interoffice communication. I want to demonstrate why beginning with a focus on disciplinary knowledge and disciplinary texts, without providing key foundational knowledge that transcends disciplines, should be the road less traveled.
Academy-Industry Relationships and Partnerships, 2017
Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication
Technical communication1 faculty often find themselves overseeing certain departmental or univers... more Technical communication1 faculty often find themselves overseeing certain departmental or university activities (such as coordinating internships), if not administering overall programs (for example, serving as director of a technical communication program). As a result, whenever members of the field meet to discuss programmatic issues, they come together in what the authors of this editorial consider to be a community of practice (CoP).Though technical communication faculty may regularly participate in multiple academic groups or communities on and off campuses (teaching circles, research triangles, professional organizations, and so on), the enterprise of program administration is at the core of the CoP we discussed here. This perception is based upon Etienne Wenger’s (1998) idea that a CoP is a group of individuals who interact to better pursue a shared understanding that binds members (enterprise) through a particular set of actions or activities (practice) connected to a certai...
Sharing Our Intellectual Traces
CONTENTS Introduction: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication 1 Tracy Bridgefo... more CONTENTS Introduction: Innovative Approaches to Teaching Technical Communication 1 Tracy Bridgeford, Karla Saari Kitalong, and Dickie Seife PART ONE; PEDAGOGICAL PERSPECTIVES 1 The Status of Service in Learning / .5 fames Dubinsky 2 Breaking Viewing Habits: Using ...
Teaching Content Management in Technical and Professional Communication
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Selected Essays by Tracy Bridgeford
Recent Books by Tracy Bridgeford
Papers by Tracy Bridgeford