Technical Document Re-working Group/Technical Communication Outreach and Events

Overview
This page is a place to document a variety of technical communication outreach projects and events members of the Technical Document Re-Working Group have participated in.

Technical Communication Collaboration, Spring 2018: BSU & Cloud Services Technical Documentation Audit and Recommendations
Academic Institution: Boise State University (BSU)

Program: Technical Writing Graduate Program

Course Title: ENGL 537 WRITING FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AND ONLINE COMMUNITIES

Course Description: Apply interactive Internet-based technologies to easily collaborate, share, link and generate content. Analyzing user-created content and online communities, students will learn techniques and best practices for using the social web to enhance workplace communication using tools such as blogs, micro-blogs, wikis, social networking sites, tag clouds, and syndication.

Course Design: 8 grad students met once a week. Jan. 9 - April 30. Students engaged in several writing projects. The project with Wikimedia spanned 4–6 weeks

Desired Outcomes: Professor wanted students to better understand how individuals collaborate socially to perform technical writing tasks in Online communities.

Final Outcomes:


 * Students had a six week project. They reviewed the technical documentation posted on WikiTech, specifically Toolforge
 * From the beginning we wanted the students to use the same tools that professional Technical Communication folks would use when collaborating. We used a combination of Google Docs, Online class meetings and email to communicate and clarify.
 * Students were encouraged to use Wikimedia IRC Channels, discussion pages on wiki and mailing lists to ask general questions of staff and volunteers.
 * We wanted students to think of the project in work terms and to consider Wikimedia a client who was consulting about the state of its technical documentation (and might not necessarily know what its needs were.)
 * Students produced a report with a set of specific (to Toolforge) and global recommendations for Technical Documentation across Wikimedia projects.