Inclusion

From a student affairs perspective, the word "inclusion" is significant in the field. Leadership specialists, cultural and diversity offices, and student activities offices all use this word to promote campus community and increase student retention. Having been in student affairs for 20 years, I have witnessed ideas and practices of inclusion. I could root this post by including theory and research that would support my claims, but for now I want to use the word inclusion to talk about how this concept in student affairs ties specifically to technical communication.

A few articles have gotten me thinking about this idea of inclusion as it relates to my dissertation. I am looking for areas where the two fields connect, intersect, and benefit from each other. Using the word inclusion as an intersection point, the fields touch in important ways. Student affairs professionals are not always seen as core to the academic mission of an institution and are sometimes described as extracurricular. This was a struggle that we talked about in my grad classes back in the day (my day being 20 years ago as I mentioned earlier). In his article, "Horizontal and Vertical Structures: The Dynamics of Organization in Higher Eduction," Fenske describes the challenges for student affairs professional in 1990:

"Student affairs divisions are particularly challenged, given their ambiguous purpose (to support holistic student learning and development); the perception that they are support services, rather than core academic functions; and their primarily historically and traditionally framed organizational structures" (p. 22).

In the student affairs field, we have struggled with being included ourselves and we have also advocated for marginalized students to be included. Many offices in student affairs exist for this purpose of providing support and encouraging inclusion, such as women's centers, diversity and cultural offices, LGBT centers, and offices for students with disabilities.

It is here, in offices for students with disabilities, that the idea of inclusion specifically intersects with technical communication. Writing digital content using open web standards provides an opportunity for student affairs professionals and technical communicators to come together to serve students. Student affairs professionals should be advocates for accessible online content, and one way that we can do this is by understanding how to read the source code for a page. With an imaged labeled in the source code for the web page, students who rely on an auditory reading of a web page and could understand an image without being able to see it. An article in the December 12, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education reports on this idea of inclusion: "Mr. Shandrow hit a wall when he got to Spanish 101. The obstacle: an online workbook that failed to correctly label images." Though this is a small example, it is a representative of the wider issues that students with disabilities face as they learn using technology. Using standards-based web design, technical communicators at universities can make web pages that are not only accessible for members of the community with disabilities, but better web design also helps the entire university population using universal design principles.

Think about the television remote as a universal design. When I was a kid, I was the remote control so my father did not have to get up to walk to the television. When it was time for M*A*S*H to air, his favorite program, I was the one who changed the channel for my dad. That remote helped those who could not walk to the television, as well as the multitudes of children that served as the channel changer. Even as recent as last night, rather than just changing the channel, we searched the entire house for the remote control which traveled down to the basement courtesy of my partner's brother. Apply that idea of universal design to creating web sites using standards recommended by A List Apart article, The Inclusion Principle, like clearly structured pages and headers, properly labeled images, and separating content structure from design ideas.

If student affairs professionals can understand the basics of digital literacy, even if we cannot write digitally, we can advocate for universal design principles that promote inclusion by helping communicate to the university community and those who interact digitally with our institutions.

What Kind of Writers Are Student Affairs Professionals?

How do student affairs professionals learn to write for the field, and could these professionals use technical communication knowledge, skills, and abilities to write better in the field? With so many students with various undergraduate degrees feeding into the student affairs graduate programs, how do graduate programs check writing skills upon admission? What skills do undergrads have when they enter a student affairs graduate program? As I begin my search for a dissertation topic, I have more questions than answers right now. In order to suss out answers to these questions, I need to formulate these questions and answers.

What level of writing skill do employers expect of student affairs professionals? How important is writing to the field of student affairs and what does research has to say about it?

Questions About Student Affairs Writing Education and Experience

-What undergraduate majors to student affairs graduates or professionals have upon entering graduate school or the field?

-What grade point averages do student affairs graduates or professionals have when entering graduate school or the field?

-More specifically, what grades in English courses and writing courses do new professionals or graduates earn?

-What writing training do graduate students in student affairs receive? Based on my program at WIU-- I wrote reflection pieces, case studies, research papers, debate materials, note cards for reading responses, group projects, counseling transcripts. There was probably more than that...

-What makes student affairs professionals competent writers?

Research Ideas About Student Affairs Professionals' Writing Practices

-Compare curricula for graduate programs in higher education programs in the United States.

-Compare academic and grade point data, if I can obtain it, from schools that admit students for graduate school. This would need to be done anonymously.

-Interview or survey students in graduate programs (new professionals, mid-level managers, senior administrators) to see if they can assess their writing skills.

-Present some sort of a field test for writing to graduates, new professionals, mid-level managers, senior administrators

-Survey groups of professionals at the different levels to see if their writing changes over time-- as a graduate what do you write? What are the mid-level managers writing? And the senior administrators? I'd need to think about the way I characterize the various levels in the field.

-Qualitative versus quantitative-- historical study of curricula in student affairs programs may be a way to look at changes in programs over time. Has there ever been a "writing for student affairs" course in any programs? That might be something good to take stock of by reviewing some program websites to see if I can find that type of a course. As a course, what would writing in student affairs look like? If it does not exist, should it?

Technical communication and student affairs thought: both have credibility issues in their fields, though tech comm has done a better job advocating for itself because it is the breadwinner of the English family. With its practical, measurable outcomes, tech comm does a better job justifying itself than does student affairs. Student affairs could borrow techniques from the technical writing field to strengthen the writing of graduate students and student affairs professionals at any level.

Student affairs folks need to be better about telling the student affairs story to students, senior administration, the faculty, and the community that surrounds the campus. Various ideas in technical communication could serve the field of student affairs. This idea of storytelling is important and people need to be able to understand what student affairs people do for students. Student Affairs professionals need to be able to communicate these messages using methods that are appropriate for the audience and are designed for maximum rhetorical effectiveness. Ideas of accountability are perforating student affairs conversations and the need to chart, graph, explain, demonstrate through financial documents and the pressure to perform and report on that performance is real.

What I Write in My Student Affairs Job

• Contract drafts
• Requests for proposals
• Financial documents
• Supervision documents, such as evaluations and written disciplinary letters
• Emails
• Monthly reports
• Policies and procedures
• Operational documentation the job positions
• Position descriptions and justifications
• Organizational charts
• Help desk tickets
• Website content
• Justification pieces to senior administration (most recently answering the question about why we use Federal Work Study to support campus auxiliary operations)

Forming A Hypothesis...or Just Spit-balling

Graduate students entering a program in student affairs come from various educational backgrounds and therefore have varied backgrounds in writing. This variation poses problems for the student affairs field if graduates and new professionals are not taught using writing standards in student affairs programs in the united states. Without this standardization for writing in the field, new professionals are unprepared for the various types of documents and arguments that can be made using the skills that technical communication education provides.

Side Note

This is a post I wrote using the Write or Die website, so it may ramble. If you have not seen the website, Write or Die challenges you to a free-write session where there are consequences for taking your fingers off of the keys. I set the "punishment" on the most forgiving level and just watched as a pink background flashed on my screen when I took too long to write. More aggressive options are available. One setting undoes typing that you have on the screen if you are not typing fast enough. I like the site because I focused on getting my ideas out there. I did not worry about writing coherently. Hence the apology at the start of this post. I have attempted to clean it up a bit, but I not spend too much time on the rewrite. Mostly, I'd like to keep my writing in as few places as possible, so I am adding the Write or Die speed-write, I mean free-write, session to these blog pages.

Student Affairs Professionals Should Add Technology Tools to Their Toolboxes

While reading Tom Johnson's blog post, "Tactics for Survival: A technical writer's field guide to overcoming the forces of petty project managers and broken IT environments," I thought about how student affairs professionals and technical communicators approach the idea of tools differently. When I was in graduate school working on my College Student Personnel degree, we talked of tools in the toolbox. These tools were mostly developmental and behavioral theories that we studied, and then we practiced these theories using our daily interactions with students in our assistantships, internships, and practicums. For technical communicators, the tools may be intellectual ideas as well, such as audience analysis research and rhetoric writings, but often what I see or read about are the actual tools that the technical communicator uses to communicate messages.

Student affairs folks could benefit from the discussion about tools in the practical sense that technical communicators talk about it. Programs, software, hardware, deceives...these are all tools that tech comm professionals use in their everyday work to produce, deliver, and track information. Because our students are digitally savvy, student affairs professionals should work to educate themselves and to keep up with these practical tools. Knowing and using practical communication tools makes communication with students more meaningful.

Authors Klages and Clark point out, in their article 2009 article "New Worlds of Errors and
Expectations: Basic Writers and Digital Assumptions," that students in college today don't know a day without technological conveniences that are a part of life from the minute that their cell phone wakes them up in the morning. While students know this technology and integrate it seamlessly into their lives, they may still not know the basics of writing, arguing, and critical thinking. Young student affairs professionals that attend graduate school right out of their undergraduate studies will certainly have similar technology experiences as the undergraduate students; however, the theoretical tools in their tool boxes come from learning and not from any experience other than the experience gained from the two years of school.

With a few years of experience beyond graduate school, student affairs professionals begin to develop the body of knowledge that informs their actions. Without a curiosity for the technology tools that are constantly emerging, the student affairs professional can lose ground with technology quickly. The student affairs professional needs to keep informed about the tools that are available to them so that they can easily communicate with students. The tools for communication cannot be a barrier to the interactions that we must have for students.

The good news for professionals with some experience behind them is that it is easy to join and keep up with the conversation in and around technology. Students and new professionals are willing and excited to share when they know about technologies. Mid-level and senior professionals should be treating this learning as an extension of their professional development. Communicating using technology is an important tool for the studnet affairs professional's toolbox.

What Technical Communicators Teach Student Affairs Professionals about Collaborative Authorship

Collaborative authorship may be a place where the fields of Technical Communication and Student Affairs meet. And in this meeting, each may learn from one another. Student affairs professionals and technical communicators may have some valuable lessons to teach each other about the value of collaboration and authorship, separately, and collaborative authorship.

Student Affairs: Collaboration for Development is Fundamental
The goal for the student affairs professional is to help develop students into a better students, into leaders, and eventually, into contributing citizens of the university. Using developmental theories, student affairs professionals work together collaboratively to assist students in every way imaginable. Teams of support staff in colleges and universities use various theories to collaborate with fellow professionals, faculty, and most importantly, the students themselves.

Viewing students through the various theoretical lenses such as cognitive development, identity development, and career inventories, student affairs professionals work together with the end goal of helping students develop.

Technical Communication: Authorship for Audience is Fundamental
The technical communications professional is keenly aware of audience in authoring materials for users. Collaboration for the technical communicator means working as a liaison between developers of content and users of content. Collaboration often takes the form of technical communicators producing several iterations of documents for their audience to approve. Using various technical tools, software and hardware, a technical communicator works collaboratively with the user to deliver understandable, useful content.

Student Affairs and Technical Communication: Learning Fundamentals from Each Other
In student affairs realms, there is a real sense of working together to benefit the community of students. There is a greater good that drives a student affairs person in their jobs, and that greater good is developing students collaboratively. Technical communicators are driven as well-- driven to communicate the best message to the audience in they way that the audience will best hear it. Though this is the case, technical communicators don't work often in collaborative teams due to the often times freelance nature of positions. Student affairs personnel have the benefit of being located on the same campus together in the community. Technical communicators could learn from student affairs professionals by understanding that the community interaction is critical and that face to face interactions--social interactions, even-- are essential. Where the student affairs professionals fall short is with authorship. The documentation that comes from the field is too sparse and not iterative enough. Student affairs people can take a lesson from technical communicators: ask students for input repeatedly and make documents that reflect the feedback.

Collaborative Authorship: Fundamentals for Student Affairs Professionals
Student affairs personnel can infuse collaborative authorship into several areas of their jobs. For those who supervise student employees, collaborating on the writing of the policies and procedures on a wiki can be a way for professional staff to elicit constant feedback from students. A wiki document is a way to build information and trust in the documentation process because of the collaborative nature of the writing. Certain permissions can and should be set, but there could be levels that are "unlocked" as students achieve greater responsibility in the organization.

A collaborative wiki could be used for student organization volunteers as well. Trainings would benefit by collaborative authorship, as well. Committees of students and professionals should be working together to author training documents and sessions.

Collaborative authorship works for student affairs professionals working up the administrative chain of the university. By banding together to tell the story, various departments can and should author documentation that shows the worth of student affairs to students and to the university. There is not enough being written by professionals in student affairs.