Browsing by Subject "Single sourcing"
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Item Authoring Content for Reuse: A Study of Methods and Strategies, Past and Present, and Current Implementation in the Technical Communication Curriculum(2010-12) Henschel, Sally; Carter, Joyce L.; Barker, Thomas; Kemp, FredThe practice of authoring and managing content for reuse or re-assembly pervades industry documentation practices. In an effort to save time, reduce costs, and improve content consistency, particularly in regulated industries, practitioners are adopting methods and implementing technologies to author, label, store, and manage content in order to make the content easily extractable for re-assembly and reuse in more than one context, for a variety of audiences. This dissertation examines the societal and technological forces that precipitated the current workplace practice of authoring content for reuse. It then reviews rhetorical theories that have shaped composing practices from classical times to the present, and the methods and modes of structuring and authoring content for reuse adopted in today’s workplace. This study then addresses the question, if the practices associated with authoring content for reuse are integral to the work of technical communicators in the field, how and in what course context are these practices, methods, rhetorical strategies, and technologies being incorporated into the technical communication curriculum? Through data collected from a survey of and follow-up communication with academics in the field of technical communication and an analysis of five technical communication textbooks, the study presents as results a description, snapshots, of the practices and strategies associated with authoring content for reuse as implemented in the technical communication curriculum. The objective of the study is to contribute knowledge and benchmark data to the field on the practices, methods, rhetorical strategies, and technologies being implemented; the course context in which they are taught; and whether or not students’ knowledge and application of authoring content for reuse are tied to course and program goals, objectives, and outcomes.Item ObjectRhetoric: an object-oriented rhetoric of hypertext for technical communication(Texas Tech University, 2007-12) Jones, Roland AlexanderTechnical communication is becoming increasingly focused on the efficient production of documentation, largely commoditizing a profession based, at least in part, on the art of rhetoric. As technical communicators embrace single sourcing, the practice of writing content for one context and reusing it in others, the impetus is on technological solutions that enable more output with less effort. This dissertation will describe a new rhetoric to help technical communicators in dealing with the complexities of composing within a hypertextual and single-source based environment while employing the traditional skills of the profession. A useful model for technical communicators working with reusable content is that offered by object-orientation, a programming method that likewise focuses on reusable content, specifically program code. Rather than defining a series of algorithms in program code, which results in inefficiencies similar to those of writing and maintaining individual documents, object-orientation segregates code by creating models of interaction among code objects which then govern themselves. Such a process could help create more efficient and sustainable methods of creating documentation if applied to technical communication. Since these objects offer a new approach to authoring, a rhetoric of such objects becomes necessary before they can be implemented for technical communication. Since these objects are connected through complex referential relationships, they are also an advanced form of hypertext. Object-orientation and the hypertext theory of Ted Nelson provide language suitable for defining such a rhetoric. A theory of invention is equivalent to understanding how knowledge is formed, manipulated, and stored within the mind; cognitive theory and the work of Marvin Minsky and Roger Shank help define a suitable metaphor for this rhetoric. Lastly, elements of the process will be shown through the example of real-world activities such as those involved in complex documentation efforts.