I am pleased to announce that I was the featured technical communication graduate student on the Minnesota State University, Mankato Department of English website!

The feature can be found here.

I am thrilled to announce that I have completed and presented my capstone work for my MA in Technical Communication program. It has been a long time coming, but this has been a labor of love.

Abstract:
Author support systems are critical in wiki help systems. I provide a critical review of existing research on author support systems, content strategy, content management, and how these intersect, as well as a structural content analysis of five content templates in an effort to define genre conventions.


I encourage you to check out the complete paper, "Author Support Systems for Wiki Based Help: Genre Conventions for Content Templates."

With that, I will be graduating with my Master of Arts in Technical Communication on May 7th!

I have been accepted to present part of my research at the Graduate Scholars of English Association Annual Conference on March 19th at Minnesota State University, Mankato. See my conference proposal below.

Technical communication, as a profession, is continually shifting - redefining its borders and the skill set of its practitioners. Technical communicators have had to hone their skills in areas such as content strategy and content management. Similarly, the genre of help documentation is changing, pushing the boundaries of media. As manuals and other print documents begin to fade, other media like wiki-based help are gaining momentum. Practices of content management and content strategy intersect at author support systems for wiki contributors.

Wiki-based social help systems are wiki sites where technical communicators, software developers, and end-users can collaborate to create a community of task-based, applicable help for a product. Wikis use content generated by a variety of authors, and technical communicators may have somewhat less control over content. Thusly, it is important that technical communicators support a variety of author personas by implementing author support systems. These author support systems are a toolkit to quickly train an author to write effectively and efficiently for the wiki. This involves content definitions, content templates, definitions of workflows, editing guidelines, style guidelines, formatting guidelines, and many others. Workflows have authors creating content, which is then edited by a moderator or technical communicator and then published.

My paper focuses on an examination of the necessity for these systems and defining the conventions of the genre. My research fills a gap in the scholarly conversation by working to define genre conventions and looking at the functionality of such systems. I do so through a critical review of existing literature and through a blended content analysis of a variety of author support systems. I also analyze personal experience with developing one of these toolkits while at Microsoft. While my paper covers author support systems as a whole, I focus on content templates as a sub-genre. My paper expresses how wiki author support systems expand the borders for technical communicators in editing and workflow.

As a field, technical communication is encountering a shift in responsibility. Instead of working to create and edit content, technical communicators may experience being responsible for creating author support materials, workflows, and other various guidelines for content created by individuals in other roles, like developers and program managers. A technical communicator may serve in a more supporting role, writing-wise, so that the technical communicator may work more closely on content strategy and content management.  

There is often research happening in the technical communication field focusing on how to write or edit wiki help content, and how to strategically implement it, but there is not an abundance of research honing in specifically on how to support others in writing these types of content, particularly developers. Most of the present research on strategically developing author support systems, like content definitions, reviews of editing processes, and content templates, for social help is focused on defining the genre, rather than specific methods or types of author support content and their efficacy.

I will examine existing literature about author support systems, content strategy, and content management, and how these topics intersect to address this problem: how can technical communicators best support developers in writing effective content that is in line with content strategy and standards and that is easy to manage. Author support materials are vital to the content production process, and answering this question will improve methods and materials for supporting non-designated writers authoring content. Authors like Luke Thominet, Erin Kissane, John Gallagher, and Angelo Di Iorio, et. al. have begun this conversation, examining types of author support materials, particularly templates, and their structure, audience, and function. Present research seems to indicate that content templates are an effective method, and my proposed research will corroborate this. When content templates are efficiently and effectively designed, they empower authors to author content quickly and well. Following a more extensive review of the literature, I will be conducting an extensive content analysis of a variety of wiki help systems and their associated author support system to discover conventions of the genre and establish trends and best practices.

Last semester, I began compiling an annotated bibliography of articles and books relating to content strategy, content management, and the intersection of these two topics, author support systems. This review is ongoing, but below is a portion of the annotated bibliography submitted to fulfill requirements of my research methods course.

Introduction

With parts of industry shifting to include a much wider variety of skills and responsibilities, technical writers may have to take on different work and structure their systems differently. My research topic involves technical writers as content strategists, developing content systems and supervising the writing activities of non-skilled writers. I want to discover how technical writers act as content strategists managing documentation systems, with a specific focus on how and what materials they develop for author support. For example, are content templates and structured authoring guides an effective way to support non-skilled writers?
My sources include research topics like content strategy, content management methods, and author support materials. This annotated bibliography will review and evaluate these sources, and it will enable me to have a more well-rounded understanding of the literature surrounding my research interest.


Baehr, Craig. 2013. “Developing a sustainable content strategy for a technical communication body of knowledge.” Technical Communication. 60 (4): 293 – 306.


Baehr was looking to understand all that goes into developing what he calls a sustainable content strategy, specifically for the technical communication body of knowledge. One of his main points is that the content strategy must evolve as the users do. Baehr also confirms that for a system of this sheer size, it is important to use a variety of content strategy methods, to accommodate the number of user, the amount of content, and the extended time. After completing a review of the content strategy, Baehr focused on the user, and how to design the content system to be the most user-focused.

While I am not researching bodies of knowledge or information taxonomy, this research can still be helpful to my work. The Technical Communication Body of Knowledge is huge, and I can use Baehr’s study to understand a method of creating a content strategy for a system of this size. This study is relevant to the field of technical communication in numerous ways. The most relevant may be Baehr’s focus on ways to design user-focused content systems. Baehr also addresses a variety of author support methods, particularly templates, as part of content strategy, which is the bulk of my research interest.

Baehr does not seem to be conducting so much of a study as a review of his entire process. He lists his method as the actual creation of the technical communication body of knowledge’s content strategy, rather than a more conventional primary method like surveys or interviewing. This could be expected, as the each page has the heading “Applied Research.” However, I think that this was very productive, because it provides a much more in depth, if hyper-specific, look into content strategy development. It includes all aspects, rather than honing in on one facet of content strategy like some other sources I’ve reviewed.


Di Iorio, Angelo, Fabio Vitali, and Stefano Zacchiroli. 2008. “Wiki content templating.” In WWW ’08 Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web. ACM. 615-624.


Di Iorio, Vitali, and Zacchiroli analyzed two types of wiki content templates, functional and creational templates, using an engine-agnostic method, and used that analysis to produce their own template recommendation, lightly-constrained templates. They also provide an implementation plan for their lightly-constrained templates model. Di Iorio, et. al. claim that providing content templates will enable authors to develop more in-depth wiki content more easily. Templates should be structured, readable, and safe (meaning that users can revert changes and know the impact of those changes). Di Iorio, et. al. outline how lightly-constrained templates achieve these goals.   

This study is making a practical contribution by providing a recommendation, lightly-constrained templates, and implementation ideas. Not only providing practical considerations, Di Iorio, et. al. give a helpful task analysis of tasks and users involved in this process. Di Iorio, et. al.’s research is relevant to my own work because it is an extended look into the functionality of multiple wiki content templates and how users interact with them. I am using this study as a way to deepen my knowledge on the back-end functionalities of wikis and content templates. This study also provides background for me on tasks involved with creating, implementing, and using wiki content templates.

This study was a mixed methods one, and Di Iorio et. al. used what they define as an engine-agnostic analysis of tasks and users of the two template conventions to develop their recommendation. Including this task analysis as a precursor to criticisms of current conventions gives Di Iorio, et. al. a frame for those criticisms and increases the credibility of Di Iorio, et. al. To structure the task analysis, Di Iorio, et. al. reviewed many different wikis that use functional templates, creational templates, or both for their templating. This logical organization also enables a non-expert reader to better understand the larger context before delving into Di Iorio, et. al.’s recommendations.


Laroche, Chris, and Brian Traynor. 2013. "Technical Communication on Life Support: Content Strategy and UX are the Reclamation." In IEEE International Professional Communication 2013 Conference. 1-6.


According to Laroche and Traynor, technical writers must continue to make a case for themselves, their usefulness, and return on investment by increasing their skills in usability, user experience, and content strategy. Instead of writing product documentation that isn’t communicating well to start with, technical writers can get even closer to product development, developing the user experience and using content strategy to ensure that communication is smooth from the product to any other documentation involved. So, there are more and more job listings for content strategists, information architects, and UX designers, or at least for skills in these areas.

The authors work to answer a practical problem—namely, the continued difficulty in articulating the necessity and return on investment of technical writers to an organization. Integrating content strategy and user experience design into technical writers’ duties allows technical writers to not only develop better products and documentation but also provide a more streamlined process of communication within their organization and to end users. However, the article also describes the changes in the professional realm, and these how changes are resulting in an even greater occupational outlook for technical writers with a wider variety of skills.

The authors review other studies and draw conclusions from research into job listings for technical writers. One of the most notable studies includes a 2004 survey by Barbara Giammona, who interviewed thirty-eight people. Her results showed that technical writers needed to reinforce their “strategic value” by using their skills in these related disciplines. The authors also reviewed the expected skills and qualifications mentioned in job listings for technical writers. They found significant cross over in user experience design and content strategy. However, the authors do not provide specific examples of skills, qualifications, or responsibilities listed in these job descriptions.