Globalization is radically transforming technical communication (TC) both in the workplace and in higher education. This article examines these changes and the ways in which TC programs position themselves amid globalization, in particular the ways in which they use emerging global partnerships to prepare students for global work and citizenship. For this purpose, the authors report on a Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication-supported exploratory study of current partnership initiatives in TC programs. The study indicated a high level of activity, planning, and interest in global partnerships and revealed a range of creative and innovative partnerships that systematically integrate new opportunities for experiential learning, collaborative international research, and civic engagement in a global context into programs and their curricula. Partnerships also emphasize cultural sensitivity, equal partner contribution, and mutual benefit, thus offering alternatives to emerging global trade visions of higher education. The article also identifies key challenges that partnerships face, suggesting implications for programs and the field as a whole to facilitate successful partnerships.Certainly the top global concern for technical communicators in the United States is the notion of sending TC work offshore. (Giammona, 2004, p. 355) We are at the beginning of the era of transnational higher education, in which academic institutions from one country operate in another, academic programs are jointly offered by universities from different countries, and higher education is delivered through distance technologies.As these quotations attest, technical communication (TC) in both the workplace and higher education is undergoing powerful change as a result of globalization. As TC manager Giammona (2004) found in her survey of influential TC practitioners, globalization is one of the key issues technical communicators face in the workplace. At the same time, as TC programs respond to these changes, they find themselves positioned in what higher education researcher Altbach (2004a, 2004b) described as a profoundly changing environment.In this article, we explore these changes in both the workplace and higher education and examine how TC programs position themselves amid these changes. In the first part of this article, we analyze globalization trends and their influence on TC in the workplace, specifically noting the literacies technical communicators need to develop for global work and citizenship. As we show, these changes increasingly call for new program partnerships to facilitate learning environments that immerse TC students in global digital networks with professionals, peers, citizens, and experts from diverse contexts; challenge students to negotiate and build shared learning cultures across diverse boundaries; and provide students with new opportunities for civic engagement in a global context. However, these are not the only changes calling for new partnerships. These partnerships also play an...
Making Legal Knowledge in Global Digital Environments political issues that arise when one considers why one court might openly attribute another, and why another court might have reservations about doing so (as evidenced, for example, by the debate between Ginsberg and Scalia). These issues in the context of legal writing may inform how we understand remix writing, attribution, and intertextuality in more local settings, such as our writing classrooms.Using comparative techniques to teach differences and similarities between new texts and old texts, to examine the process of remix, to examine intertextuality in new contexts including legal forums, and to raise the issue of power and politics in the strategies of remix writing itself, gives students an awareness of how complicated digital writing might be from a legal standpoint (see also Yancey, 2009). In gaining increased awareness of these issues, it is generative for composition teachers to explore judicial opinions using the tools that they always have-examining rhetorical turns taken by judges. Such explorations provide opportunities to examine the power of writing.Copyright law and fair use/fair dealing are important to writing teachers and their students in the digital age because these legal concepts shape knowledge-making practices (Rife, 2007). Copyright law, law that deals specifically with writing, shapes our classroom practices as well as how (and whether) field knowledge is constructed, whether we acknowledge this or not (Durack, 2006;Westbrook, 2006).Copyright law is important to writing teachers and researchers because such law attempts to control the process and product with which we are most concerned: writing. For educators, fair dealing/use is crucial in order to teach and in order to encourage student learning. It follows then that copyright should be taught in writing classes, and along this trajectory, it will also be productive to examine the law itself as writing, and how the law-as-knowledge is constructed by writing, thus illuminating the power that can be achieved through the remix, creation, and circulation of texts such as judicial opinions, in global contexts.
Business professionals increasingly use digital tools to collaborate across multiple cultures, locations, and time zones. Success in this complex environment depends on a shared culture that facilitates the making of knowledge and the best contributions of all team members. To prepare managers for such communication, the authors designed and implemented a semester-long intercultural virtual team project between a management communication course in the United States and one in Canada. To prevent faultlines between subgroups on each campus, the authors set a clear outcome for students’ research, established equity between the two sites, structured assignments so that students worked interdependently across sites”, and encouraged inclusive communication. Faculty considering such a partnership should incorporate a robust collaborative workspace, incorporate preliminary exercises before a large project, provide intensive mentoring and instruction on peer review, arrange for a real visit or videoconference between locations, and expect the project to be both fun and demanding.
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