I am teaching technical writing “by the book” for the first time in many years. That is to say I’ve taught technical writing a few times in the last few year, but this is the first time in a while that I’ve used a book. This semester, I’m using Heather Graves and Roger Graves’s Strategic Guide to Technical Communication (2nd Edition).
I have to admit that I’m departing from my usual textbook-less approach because I am finding the business of being a departmental chair more time consuming than I’d like, and I’m hoping that the textbook provides structures that I’m currently not able to provide. I want to write about some of the experiments I’ve tried in technical writing, but I thought I’d do so through the lens of comparison with this semester.
(The last time I taught technical writing, for example, I centered my class on making robots, and there isn’t a textbook that let me do that, but I will have to tell you more about that later…)
Ron Brooks 