Programmatic Perspectives

Moving Program Reviews into the Future

2025-10-06T10:40:59+00:00

Since its inception, the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC) has emphasized both the development and quality of technical and professional communication (TPC) programs. This article traces the evolution of CPTSC’s external program review process, from early definitions of program quality in the 1970s and 1980s through the late-20th-century rise of outcomes-based assessment, to contemporary efforts to align reviews with program sustainability. Program review is distinguished from program assessment, in that reviews encompass broader factors—faculty, governance, resources, recruitment, and strategic positioning—while integrating assessment data as one component. While assessment literature in the past two decades primarily focused on identifying and mapping learning outcomes within curricula, CPTSC’s External Program Review Taskforce (ExPRT) establishes a comprehensive external review that evaluates programs beyond individual student performance.

The article details the updated review guidelines, reviewer recruitment processes, fee structures, and support materials. The new model emphasizes a consistent, replicable process including pre-review preparation, onsite evaluation, and post-review reporting, designed to help programs navigate budgetary pressures, increased accountability demands, and a competitive higher-education landscape. A case study from Arizona State University’s Technical Writing and Communication program illustrates how aligning curriculum revision with external review requirements strengthens program coherence, scaffolding, and long-term viability.

Leveraging AI for Data-Informed Resume Writing

2025-12-02T10:31:13+00:00

This article presents a pedagogical framework for teaching data-informed résumé writing in an AI-driven hiring environment. As applicant tracking systems (ATS) increasingly mediate between job seekers and human reviewers, students must learn to write résumés that communicate effectively with both audiences. The framework introduces four stages: viewing text as structured data, gathering job postings through web scraping, analyzing data with large language models (LLMs), and applying insights to revise résumés. This approach not only prepares students to navigate AI gatekeepers but also develops transferable AI literacy skills, fostering critical engagement with emerging technologies in professional communication.

From Incident to Insight: Understanding AI Model Lifecycle Management through Case Analysis

2025-06-20T14:03:17+00:00

Understanding the AI lifecycle—the series of tasks and decisions that shape an AI project from conception to deployment—is essential for ensuring responsible AI practices. This article presents a hands-on teaching case designed for technical and professional communication classrooms, where students examine lifecycle failures in actual AI incidents. This approach helps students gain a deeper understanding of AI model lifecycle management in real-world contexts.

From Editing and Writing to Editing/Writing

2026-02-16T13:14:08+00:00

Recent scholarly, social, and technological shifts prompted revisions to an editing course in a professional and technical writing program after students’ project logs revealed persistent views of editing as mere error correction, undermining the course’s learning outcomes. Guided by concepts from Critical Archival Studies (CAS), course revisions reframed editing as editing/writing: A socio-cultural, interpretive practice shaped by power, context, and technological mediation. These changes, including an application of CAS to L.M. Montgomery’s journals, prompted a broader program-level rethinking of writing and editing as inextricable practices with ethical and cultural impact. This showcase concludes by considering implications for programs that prepare students to navigate authority, authenticity, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence in professional and technical communication.

Intersectional Internship Experiences across TPC Programs

2025-12-01T08:32:50+00:00

This article reports on interviews conducted with students from various intersectional positionalities and institutions regarding their experiences in TPC internship programs. It contributes to scholarship on internships in higher education and TPC by focusing on barriers and supports that interns encountered throughout their internship experiences. Findings show that interns’ experiences were affected by various factors, which include: dominant cultural narratives surrounding internships, the liminal positionality that interns are often expected to occupy, the type of mentorship interns receive from faculty members, how well support for interns is integrated into their host site communities, and the material barriers/supports that interns face. Based on these findings, this study offers concrete recommendations for bolstering support structures in TPC internship programs for all students.

What Do We Mean By "AI Literacy"?

2025-09-11T12:21:06+00:00

This article examines how educators navigate tensions between efficiency-driven integration and critical approaches to generative AI literacy. Through thematic analysis of twelve institutional AI frameworks and collaborative autoethnographic reflections, we identify significant gaps between policy aspirations and pedagogical realities. While institutions converge around principles of human oversight and ethical consideration, educators face challenges including time constraints and tensions between preparing students for AI-integrated futures while maintaining critical perspectives. We propose a “slow pedagogy” approach that resists efficiency-driven integration in favor of deliberate, justice-centered engagement, offering a reflective heuristic for practitioners across educational contexts.

Prospective Students' Insights

2025-10-29T14:42:53+00:00

Given recent attention to recruitment and retention of marginalized students in Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) graduate programs, this study identifies barriers and expectations of prospective applicants. The study argues that academic institutions must prioritize the voices and needs of applicants to shape program design and recruitment practices. Drawing inspiration from the social justice turn, this research aims to decenter the recruiting institution by offering actionable recommendations that align with applicants' aspirations within the limitations of existing academic structures.

Focus groups conducted at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) reveal the challenges undergraduates face when considering graduate education, including institutional rigidity, inadequate institutional support, and financial burdens. In light of the broader context of anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) laws, which complicate efforts to foster inclusive environments, this study underscores the importance of mentorship, institutional backing, and targeted recruitment initiatives in enhancing access to graduate education. We provide readers with actionable recommendations for mitigating participant-identified barriers to graduate education—even in politically restrictive states—aiming to create more supportive and welcoming environments for marginalized applicants in search of TPC graduate programs.

The Capstone Journey

2026-01-23T11:29:51+00:00

Capstone experiences provide important opportunities for learning that integrates theory and practice while developing situated and reflective knowledge. However, reflection and integration are challenging to plan and enact from a programmatic perspective. In this article, we discuss how students’ perceptions and experiences of academic time shaped their perception of a capstone course in our master’s-level technical communication curriculum. Drawing on our observations of students’ performance in the capstone class alongside a small-scale interview inquiry, we discuss how we came to empathize with students’ experiences of the course and learning process. We follow our analysis with a discussion of how temporalities (as experiences of institutional time structures) shaped our capstone redesign. We designed a capstone journey with many planned student touchpoints both within and outside typical formal curricular structures to address students’ perceived struggles. Our article adds to the literature about capstone pedagogy in technical and professional communication by focusing on the role of academic infrastructure (specifically organizational policies, material, and social relationships) on students’ perceptions of learning time, while offering a model for capstone redesign that distributes integrated learning across multiple interactions with people and information.

A Field-Wide Examination of Assignments in the Service Course in Technical and Professional Communication

2025-06-03T07:35:44+00:00

Our goal is that field-wide insights can assist TPC program administrators (PAs) and faculty in considering the kinds of assignments that should be included in their own service courses. We asked the question: If we gathered information on assignments students are asked to complete from a diverse range of institutions across the US, would a set of common field-wide assignments emerge? And if so, do the common genres align with what TPC knows about the genres most frequently written in the workplace? Data gathered from syllabi (n=90) revealed the most common assignments across the service course in the US are reports, proposals, job materials, instructions, presentations, and business correspondence. Findings suggest faculty should consider the number of assignments, improve terminology used in syllabi and assignments, and improve assignment design.

Review of Considering Students, Teachers, and Writing Assessment Vols. 1 & 2

2026-01-27T13:04:24+00:00

Editors Diane Kelly-Riley, Ti Macklin, and Carl Whithaus have curated an excellent list of chapters about the many complex challenges facing the field of writing assessment in their collection Considering Students, Teachers, and Writing Assessment Volume 1: Technical and Political Contexts and Volume 2: Emerging Theoretical and Pedagogical Practices. This edited collection is part of the “Perspectives on Writing” series of books and focuses on articles gathered from the Journal of Writing Assessment. Volume 1 of this collection offers a wide range of chapters related to the relationship between reliability and validity, the role of politics in designing a program’s writing assessment structure, and the effects of automated scoring on both the assessment of writing and writing itself. Volume 2 dissects many additional challenges related to writing assessment including how fairness complicates and enhances conversations about reliability and validity and a closer examination of the lived experiences of students and educators in an assessment environment. Taken together, these volumes showcase powerful discussions about the current state of writing assessment in the twenty-first century and will benefit any educator or scholar in the field of technical and professional communication.

Review of AI and Writing

2026-02-01T09:34:31+00:00

In AI and Writing, Sidney I. Dobrin offers students, instructors, and program administrators a broad overview of what generative AI (GenAI) technology is, how it works, and how it changes writing in professional, academic, civic, and personal contexts. While it was written as a textbook for writing-intensive courses focused on GenAI, Dobrin’s book doubles as a starting point for thinking about how large language models (LLMs) can be incorporated into writing assignments, curricula, and program outcomes.

Review of Technical Communication for Environmental Action

2026-03-31T09:08:55+00:00

Technical Communication for Environmental Action, edited by Sean D. Williams, offers a range of voices examining multiple angles and approaches to using technical communicators to advance environmental action. The edited collection, published by State University of New York Press, provides an introduction by Williams, 11 authored chapters, and an epilogue by Caroline Gottschalk-Druschke. This collection is timely and necessary because, although research on technical communication related to environmental action is increasing, there is still relatively little guidance on it. Williams explains that the goal of the collection is to provide voices surrounding three rhetorical concepts: praxis, phronesis, and dialogue.

Editors’ Introduction to Issue 17.1

2026-05-05T16:29:27+00:00