“Industry-Academic Resource Development: Structured Authoring” 

Facilitators: Stan Doherty, Rebekka Andersen, and Ashley Hardin

​​When & Where: Thursday, October 26, 8:00–10:00 am in Eola 1. Advance registration required.

Workshop Background

The SIGDOC Structured Authoring Committee consists of industry professionals and academics who seek to promote collaboration between academic programs in technical communication (professors, students) and industry professionals (writers, content strategists, architects, trainers, managers). Members of the committee specialize in structured authoring and management of that structured content and are working to develop consulting, instructional, and hands-on resources for the curriculum. At SIGDOC 2023, workshop facilitators will share with participants drafts of the first generation of deliverables: 

  • Speaker Directory: Industry professionals willing to present to classes on specific topics. 
  • Modular instructional materials: Conceptual and procedural slide decks and videos about structured authoring that instructors can customize and assemble into ready-to-deliver classroom applications. lectures, and labs. 
    • What is structured authoring?
    • What is semantic markup?
    • What does structured authoring look like in a Docs-as-Code environment?
    • How do I create, assemble, and build my first DITA publication in Oxygen Editor?
    • How do I create, assemble, and build my first DITA publication with a text editor and the DITA Open Toolkit? 
  • Sample data: Open source collections of ready-to-use documentation sets. 

Our pre-conference workshop will showcase these deliverables through hands-on activities and discussion.

Structure and Format

Module-1 (15 minutes): Introductions & Committee Charge and Goals

Module-2 (15 minutes): Small & Large Group Discussions Module-3 (15 minutes): Presentation – Introduction to Structured Authoring 

  • What is structured content (both formal and informal) and what are the benefits of structured content? 
  • What are the main approaches to structured authoring and managing structured content? 
    • Structured content in an XML DITA environment
    • Structured content in a docs-as-code environment

Module-4 (30 minutes): Practicum 1 – Creating, Assembling, and Building a DITA Publication

  • Using Oxygen XML Editor, participants will create, assemble, and build a DITA publication. They will also learn about reusing content and building multiple deliverables, as well as options for managing content and customizing output. 

Module-5 (30 minutes): Practicum 2 – Docs-as-Code in the Real World

  • Participants will receive a tour of a live docs-as-code environment, including:
    • A topic map file, which dictates the site navigation.
    • Templates for concept, procedure, and reference modules and how these modules are assembled.
    • The build process for previewing and publishing content.
    • A review of the tools that can be used, from static site generators to editing tools for writing in markdown or AsciiDoc. 

Module-6 (15 minutes): Feedback Session 

  • Small Group Discussion 
    • In today’s practicums, what did we cover that was really helpful? What did we not cover that you wish we had covered? What do you still have questions about? What should we be sure to cover in training videos that walk students through each of these approaches to building deliverables?
    • Beyond the instructional materials already in development, what instructional materials would you like to have? What would be helpful?
    • In looking at the Speaker Directory, which topics are of particular interest to you? 

What topics are missing? 

  • Looking Forward
    • Where might you consider getting involved in: Developing materials? Testing materials in your programs? 
    • How should we stay in touch?

Preparing for the Workshop

Workshop participants should bring a laptop and be prepared to access Oxygen XML Editor via their hard drive or the web. Instructions for accessing Oxygen will be shared at least a week before the workshop. Participants should also come with questions about structured authoring and any stories, challenges, or successes they want to share.

“Negotiating the Challenges of Human Participants Research in the Rhetoric of Health and Medicine (RHM) and Technical Communication”

Facilitators: Blake Scott and Sarah Singer

​​When & Where: Thursday, October 26, 8:00–10:00 am in Eola 2.  Advance registration required.

Workshop Background

How can scholars working at the intersection of technical communication and RHM conduct ethical research with human subjects? Scholars have long sought out “durable and portable” (Molloy, 2019) research methods involving human data, including surveys (Teston et al., 2019), community-engaged partnerships (Byrd, 2019; Swacha, 2021), interviews (Adams, 2022; Jack, 2016 ), and digital tools (De Hertogh, 2018; Edenfield et al., 2021). In fact, in their introduction to Methodologies for the Rhetoric of Health & Medicine (2018), Scott and Melonçon encourage scholarship in our field to engage questions about the “values undergirding” our “research questions, designs, and interpretations” and foreground the “messy, ‘behind-the-scenes’ decision-making, negotiation, and adjustments of our methodologies in action” (p. 16). And yet doing so remains complicated, especially amidst covid-19. Researchers face challenges such as maintaining consent from situationally vulnerable participants (Bivens, 2017), contextualizing IRB requirements (Adams, 2019; Opel, 2018), and determining the best practices for attribution and returning results (Singer, 2022).

 

Accordingly, we believe that workshopping recent methodological experiments will serve both emergent and experienced scholars. We (the workshop leaders) are each leading studies that have faced logistical, methodological, and ethical/ideological challenges. We experienced difficulty in recruiting when typical avenues were suspended, challenges with building trust remotely, questions about remote recruiting and data collection, and struggles with project adaptability. As we write up the results of our research, we wonder how to account for unwieldy mixed modalities, sizes of focus groups, nonverbal communication limited by masks, and negative reactions to data collection tools. There are few existing models. Too often, descriptions of methods in published research articles are “cleaned up” and neatly summarized, focusing on standardized methods at the expense of the ideological and practice-level dimensions of our methodologies ( Sullivan & Porter, 1997; Scott  & Melonçon, 2017). 

Together, we will encourage participants to think of themselves as “professional learner[s]” (Itchuaqiyaq et al., forthcoming) as we discuss how to ethically engage human subjects and set goals, anticipate challenges, and identify tactics and resources for current and future projects.

Structure and Format

Part 1 (15 min): Welcome and Introductions

Part 2 (15 min): Mini Case Presentations (Workshop Leaders – 2 x 15 minutes each) 

Part 3 (25 min): Paired Brainstorming of Key Questions

  1. What values inform human subjects research from your perspective? How can you proactively account for positionality, privilege, and power in your work (Walton, Moore, & Jones, 2019)? 
  2. How can we account for the ethical challenges of remote engagement with vulnerable populations?
  3. How can we manage the compilations of working with community-based organizations for recruiting and other aspects of research design and implementation?
  4. Even if scraping and analyzing public online writing does not “count” as research according to IRB protocols, how can we make this process more ethical? How can we deal with distorting direct quotation to preserve privacy, changing usernames, etc. when these may be a key part of our analyses?
  5. Where and how might IRB considerations fall short of preparing us for challenges of human subjects research (Bivens, 2017; Adams, 2019)?

Part 4 (30 min): Group Discussion

Part 5 (20 min): Goal-Setting for Current and Future Projects

References

  • Adams, H. B. (2019). Institutional “protections,” assumptions of research, and the challenges of compliance: Opening a conversation space for feminist scholars working with participants. In Jessica Enoch & Jordynn Jack (Eds.), Retellings: Opportunities for feminist research in rhetoric and composition studies (pp. 139–162). Parlor Press.
  • Adams, H.B. (2022). Enduring Shame: A Recent History of Unwed Pregnancy and Righteous Reproduction. University of South Carolina Press. 
  • Baldwinson, R. (2018). Ethics for rhetoric, the rhetoric of ethics, and rhetorical ethics in health and medicine. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 1(3), 213–238.
  • Bivens, K. M. (2017). Rhetorically listening for microwithdrawals of consent in research practice. In Lisa Meloncon & J. Blake Scott (Eds.), Methodologies for the rhetoric of health & medicine (pp. 138–156). Routledge.
  • Byrd, A. (2019). Between learning and opportunity: A study of African American coders’ networks of support. Literacy in Composition Studies, 7(2), 31-56.
  • De Hertogh, L. B. (2018). Feminist digital research methodology for rhetoricians of health and medicine. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 32(4), 480–503
  • Edenfield, A. C., Cheek, R., & Clem, S. 2021. Trans* Vulnerability and Digital Research Ethics: A Qubit Ethical Analysis of Transparency Activism. The 39th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. 
  • Itchuaqiyaq, C. U., Gottschalk Druschke, C., Cagle, L., & Bloom-Pojar, R. (forthcoming). To Community with Care: Enacting Positive Barriers to Access as Good Relations. Community Literacy Journal. 
  • Jack, J. (2016). Leviathan and the breast pump: Toward an embodied rhetoric of wearable technology. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 46(3), 207-221.
  • Lynch, J. A. (2020). The ethics of rhetoric is the rhetoric of ethics: Refusing the call to codification. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 3(3), 249–257.
  • Molloy, C. (2019). Durable, portable research through partnership with interdisciplinary advocacy groups, specific research topics, and larger data sets. Technical Communication Quarterly, 28(2), 165–176.
  • Opel, D. S. (2017). Ethical research in “health 2.0”: Considerations for scholars of medical rhetoric. In Meloncon & J. B. Scott (Eds.), Methodologies for the rhetoric of health & medicine (pp. 176–194). Routledge.
  • Reed, A. R. (2018). Building on bibliography: Toward useful categorization of research in rhetorics of health and medicine. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 48(2), 175–198.
  • Scott, J.B. & Melonçon, L. (2017). Manifesting methodologies for the rhetoric of health & medicine. In Lisa Melonçon & J. Blake Scott (Eds.), Methodologies for the rhetoric of health & medicine (pp. 1–23. Routledge.
  • Singer, S. A. (2022). Patients as Researchers: Chronicity, Health Data, and Emergent Attribution 
  • Practices. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 5(2), 130-160.
  • Sullivan, P., & Porter, J. E. (1997). Opening spaces: Writing technologies and critical research practices. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing.
  • Swacha, K. Y. (2021). Living Visual-voice as a Community-based Social Justice Research Method in 
  • Technical and Professional Communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 30(4), 375-391.
  • Teston, C., Gonzales, L., Bivens, K. M., & Whitney, K. (2019). Surveying Precarious Publics. Rhetoric of Health & Medicine, 2(3), 321–351.
  • Walton, R., Moore, K., & Jones, N. (2019). Technical communication after the social justice turn: Building coalitions for action. Routledge.
  • Wolf, S. M. (2020). Return of results in participant-driven research: Learning from transformative research models. The Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics. 48(1_suppl), 159.166.
  • Yu, J., & Juengst, E. (2020). Do groups have moral standing in unregulated mhealth research? The Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics, 48(1_suppl), 122–128.

“Ethical Data Analytics: Investigating Data Analytics as a Pedagogical Practice”

Facilitator: Daniel L. Hocutt

​​When & Where: Thursday, October 26, 8:00–10:00 am in Eola 3. Advance registration required.

Workshop Background

This workshop presents data analytics as a complementary method for audience analysis in TPC and UX pedagogy and practice. Participants will use sample data generated by users on the Fabric of Digital Life website to ask and answer questions about user behavior as a practical application of data analytics. Participants will then apply an ethical framework to their data-centered questions and answers to ensure that using data analytics for audience analysis causes no harm and perpetuates no bias in its implementation. 

Participants will leave the workshop with a better understanding of the value of data analytics to TPC and UX fields, with tools for incorporating data analytics into their classrooms and workplaces, and with frameworks for ethical engagement with data analytics. Materials will be provided electronically, and laptops will be needed during the workshop.

Structure and Format

Part 1: Introductions (:15)
Participants introduce themselves and share experience with data analytics.

Part 2: Data Analytics (:15)
Brief overview of data analytics & its connections to TPC practice.

Part 3: Planning | Implementation | Testing (:30)
Introduction to the PIT framework with hands-on work session using Google Analytics data sets.

Part 4: Ethical Framework for Data Analytics (:45)
Introduction to ethical framework with hands-on work session using results from PIT framework. 

Part 5: Closing (:15)
Q&A, discussion of usefulness and invitation to join data analytics initiative. 

Workshop Notes

This workshop has emerged from a project funded by a CTPSC research grant and further supported by a 4VA grant in Virginia. Nupoor Ranade, who is unable to attend SIGDOC 2023, has developed the frameworks applied and shared in this workshop, and collaborated as PI on research grants.

Workshop Preparation

Prior to attending the workshop, please visit the Fabric of Digital Life digital archive. Although we won’t use the website content during the workshop, familiarity with this digital archive’s content, structure, and information architecture will provide useful context in reading and interpreting data sets comprising user behavior metrics on that website.

References and Links

Learn more about the Building Digital Literacy initiative, a research cluster in the Digital Life Institute. Hocutt and Ranade are members of this research cluster.

Read our post on the Digital Life Institute blog, Who is our audience? Understanding critical data literacy with AI in Technical Communication (TC). This post follows up on ideas introduced in a post on the Digital Rhetoric Collaborative, Google Analytics and its exclusions.

You’re invited to visit our website, Innovations in Data, where we’re working to capture our own and others’ research in the ethical use of data analytics in TPC and related fields.

Ideas from and for this workshop have emerged from several collaborations, including the following articles:

  • Hocutt, D. L., Ranade, N., & Verhulsdonck, G. (2022). Localizing content: The roles of technical & professional communicators and machine learning in personalized chatbot responses. Technical Communication, 69(4), 114–131. https://doi.org/10.55177/tc148396 
  • Davis, K., Stambler, D. M., Campbell, J. L., Hocutt, D. L., Duin, A. H., & Pedersen, I. (2022). Writing infrastructure with the Fabric of Digital Life platform. Communication Design Quarterly, 10(2), 44–56. https://cdq.sigdoc.org 
  • Tham, J. C. K., Burnham, K. D., Hocutt, D. L., Ranade, N., Misak, J., Duin, A. H., Pedersen, I, & Campbell, J. L. (2021). Metaphors, mental models, and multiplicity: Understanding student perception of digital literacy. Computers & Composition, 59. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2021.102628