Training Online Technical Communication Educators to Teach with Social Media: Best Practices and Professional Recommendations

ABSTRACT

The author reports on social media research in technical and professional communication (TPC) training through a national survey of 30 professional and technical communication programs asking about their use of social media in technical communication. This research forms the basis of recommendations for training online TPC faculty to teach with social media. The author offer recommendations throughout for those who train online TPC faculty as well as for the teachers themselves.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom research
• curriculum design
• digital technologies
• pedagogical theory

Acknowledments

The author would like to thank Dr. Jennifer deWinter for serving as a co-PI on the grant and to Brandy Dieterle and Jennifer Roth Miller of the University of Central Florida Texts & Technology PhD program for their substantial assistance in setting up the survey, contacting participants, and coding and analyzing data. Thank you also to the editors and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

Funding

The author acknowledges the generous support of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) for grant funding that backed this research project.

Notes

1. Both study phases were approved by the Institutional Review Board at University of Central Florida and Worcester Polytechnic University, where the co-PIs are faculty.

2. This response rate is typical for web-based surveys, which often range between 10% to 35% depending on the length and detail of the survey (Sauermann & Roach, 2013). The total number of programs used in this study is in line with Meloncon and Henschel’s (2013) findings of 65 undergraduate programs nationally that offered such a degree.

Additional information

Funding

The author acknowledges the generous support of the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) for grant funding that backed this research project.

Notes on contributors

Stephanie Vie

Stephanie Vie is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. She researches social media’s impact on literate practices and is currently conducting several grant-funded national surveys of faculty members’ attitudes toward social media in composition. She is the managing editor for Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy. Her work has appeared in journals like First Monday, Computers and Composition, Technoculture, and Computers and Composition Online, and her textbook E-Dentity examines the impact of social media on 21st century literacies.