Published on September 21, 2009

This fall, students in ENGL 202C Technical Writing will encounter a new framework describing the spectrum of “how-to” instructions from traditional, fixed instructions to those readers can comment on and rate—or even edit themselves, thanks to Web 2.0 technologies. The instructional framework was developed over the summer by Stuart Selber, associate professor of English, during his tenure as an Information Technology Services Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) Faculty Fellow. Featured in an article he recently submitted for publication, Selber’s framework explores how new “social” online tools are currently changing the nature of instruction both at Penn State and around the world.

At one end of the spectrum is what Selber calls the self-contained instruction set, such as a manual presented in print or other static format that is handed down to a user in fixed form, often written by a professional technical writer. As an example of this how-to model, during the first week of the semester, Selber had his class discuss the “Stay Healthy During Flu Season” flier distributed across the University. He noted, “That’s the model that we’re very good at and we will continue to need.”

However, Selber was motivated to develop his more expansive framework because mention of the newer models was lacking in most technical writing textbooks. In his framework, those include “embedded” how-tos, where instructions are still fixed, but around which readers can add comments, discussions, and ratings, and “open” how-tos, which readers can actually edit or customize using tools such as wikis.

An example of the embedded model is the Web site eHow.com, where the instructions themselves are fixed in either written or video format, but around which readers can embed other information such as comments and star ratings.

An example of the open model is the Web site wikiHow.com, where anyone can write how-tos, as well as edit how-tos that have already been added by others.

“If you read through any technical writing textbook, they don’t account for the other two models at all,” Selber said. “You might find ‘Wikipedia’ or ‘wiki’ in their index, but you’ll then just find a paragraph that says, ‘A lot of people are using wikis today for technical writing.’ That’s really the extent of it, so students are getting a very one-dimensional view of how-to discourse.” Noting the explosion of how-to discourse online--much of it presented in embedded or open fashion--Selber said the practice is far ahead of the research. “At some point, we have to reflect on it and make sense of it,” he added. “We need to conceptualize and understand it, then turn those frameworks toward practice and see if they help inform practice.”

Selber explained that the points on his framework of how-to discourse are not meant to imply a progression, in the sense that the newer models using Web 2.0 tools are necessarily an improvement over traditional, fixed instructions and will replace that model. As he says in his article, “these models are more complementary than competitive and can overlap and blur together.”

Part of what Selber plans to ask students to do when he presents them with the new framework is to help him consider the question of instruction sets that are hybrids of two or more of the models. “I’m going to have them work with it, test it, and help me think through productive designs for each of the models,” he said. “We’ll be doing some critique and analysis. There are probably plenty of examples that violate those models, and I want to develop some more of those confounding examples. I definitely want to have my students help me with the full spectrum.”

Selber said he found it valuable to work with technical writers and instructional designers to help clarify his framework and to visualize his audience for the article he wrote. “I thought the framework I put together could be used by technical writers at Penn State to try to take stock of what they are doing with how-to discourse, for example, user documentation," he explained. "However, there’s no reason why this couldn’t be used in any classroom by any teacher, because although most of the channels in the classroom are formal and top-down, we know there’s lots of backchannel and bottom-up conversation.”

For more information, please contact Mary Janzen (mja11@psu.edu).

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