Thank you for a great and challenging class. I am sad that I will be missing your instruction for the Technical Editing class. It has just been posted that there are two instructors. They have big shoes to fill—that must be why it takes two!
—Ann, Technical Writing Student, BCIT
I recently wrote a corporate blog and came upon some interesting considerations. It’s one thing to write a blog for one’s own site, but to write on behalf of someone else (i.e., a company) is another matter. There’s of course the matter of style and tone, but what is appropriate especially if there are no clear guidelines.
You may have to spin things slightly to represent the best interests of your employer, but don’t be insincere—people sense it. The story I wrote, Iridium satellites not affected my recent solar storms, concerned the effects of recent solar storms on the company’s GPS location-based tracking services. I realized that it was important not to represent their technology as vulnerable or the solar storms as alarmist.
Here’s what I came up with:
Type: Training plans Objective: Describe how new course will be organised Purpose: Enable course designers to build course Audience: Instructional designers, instructors
One of the major problems I encounter with technical training and documentation is that it so often focuses on product features rather than real-world tasks users need to do their jobs. My approach is to start with learning objectives and an audience profile and then seeing how the technological feature fits in.
The following samples show a sample course design done for a course at BCIT:
I convinced myself that applying for a job through the IBM web site was a good use of my time, but I didn’t factor in how much fun it would be.
Like many mega corps, the IBM site asks us to upload our résumés and then goes on to ask us to enter all the same information again manually, field by field. By the end, we’re likely to conclude that any job we should ever get at IBM will net us similar mindless work. But who knows, filling out online applications is my form of Vegas—’cause ya’ never know…
Here’s the kicker. In the section for language competency, I was given a list of languages and a ranking system from which to choose: fluent, intermediate, basic knowledge, and no knowledge. I don’t know what the value is in adding information about a skill in which one has no knowledge. I mean, I could go on and on.
I couldn’t help myself, so I obliged!
