Technical Communication and
the RosE-Portfolio
Documenting and Reflecting on the
Development of Your
Communication Skills
Technical Communication and
the RosE-Portfolio
 Skills
of Effective Technical
Communicators
 Documenting Your Development of
Communication Skills
 Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio
System
 Reflecting on Your Development
 Sharing Your Work with Employers
Skills of Effective Technical
Communicators
5
minute writing
 What skills do effective technical
communicators possess?
 What tasks do they customarily perform
when they prepare documents?
 What kinds of documents do they produce?
Learning Objectives for RH 330,
Technical Communication
 Familiarity
with the forms of
communication appropriate to workplace
communication
 Ability to apply organizational patterns to
structure technical information
 Ability to perform audience analysis as the
basis for planning and completing any
communication task
Learning Objectives
 Ability
to locate information and assess its
accuracy
 Consistent use of proper spelling, grammar,
punctuation, and mechanics
 Experience with testing audience response
 Familiarity with various technologies useful
in the completing of communication tasks
Institute Communication
Learning Objectives
 Defined
as: An ability to communicate
effectively in oral, written, graphical, and
visual forms
 Specified
 Identify
further by 5 criteria
the readers/audience for a
communication task by assessing their
technical knowledge and information needs.
Communication
 Organize
and/or design information to meet
readers/audience needs..
 Provide
content that is factually correct,
supported with evidence, explained with
sufficient detail, and properly documented.
Communication
 Test
readers/audience response to
communication tasks to determine how well
ideas have been relayed.
 Submit
work with a minimum of errors in
spelling, punctuation, grammar, and usage.
Documenting Your Development
 Opportunities
to work on developing your
communication skills: Assignments, Peer
Review, Conferences, Final Report, Oral
Reports
 Feedback on your work
 Course Objectives Matrix
 Electronic system to store your work
 Available to prospective employers
Electronic Documentation
Method: RosE-Portfolio
Reflecting on Your Development
 Industry
Standard: Performance Review
Forms
 Example from Cummins Engine
 Reflective Statement for Communication
What is a Reflective Statement?
 A very
important element in portfolio
 Helps you assess your accomplishments at
Rose
 Reflective statement “makes a case” or
argues for the relevance of the submitted
file to a particular learning objective
Questions that the RS answers
 What
did I do?
 What does it mean?
 What have I learned?
 How might I do things differently?
 Why is it relevant to this objective?
Sample 1
I
wrote my Tech Comm report for two
reader types, a RHIT student and a
professional non-expert. The report topic is
recent development in DVD technology. It
is a really good paper.
Sample 2

I wrote this report on DVD technology for the Tech
Comm class. In order to plan this report, I had to
take into consideration the audience I was writing
for. I decided to address my report to junior-level
electrical engineering students who are interested in
learning more about DVD. For these readers, I
included a glossary of terms that . . .
Sample 2 (continued)

provide a basic vocabulary for DVD. I also
thought my readers would be better informed if I
included a section on the history of DVD
development. My professional non-expert reader
was accommodated in section 4, which gives a
case study analysis of DVD application in the
entertainment industry. I assumed that the second
reader would be more interested in how changes in
technology affect specific industries.
Sharing Your Work with
Employers
 Professional
Portfolios
 Your Job Search this year
 Access for Employers
 Determined and Controlled by You
Why is RHIT doing this?
 Quality
control:
• Are students achieving desired outcomes?
• How can we improve our educational process?
 Provide
evidence to constituencies:
• accreditation & funding agencies
• recruiters, prospective students
• faculty
Who will be looking at your
portfolio?





You
Your faculty advisor
Faculty raters
Technical support team
Anyone else to whom you give permission
(e.g., potential employers)
What will faculty raters do with
the information?
 Report
assessment results in aggregate
 Make
recommendations
for improving the educational process
 Give
feedback to students that were rated
Technical Communication and
the RosE-Portfolio
 Skills
of Effective Technical
Communicators
 Documenting Your Development of
Communication Skills
 Demonstration of the RosE-Portfolio
System
 Reflecting on Your Development
 Sharing Your Work with Employers