ABSTRACT
We no longer have, if we ever did, the luxury of examining technologies, their
practices, and their implications for the profession from a safe critical distance.
Today, the work of a professional communicator is unavoidably computer
mediated-and mainly, if not exclusively, digital. Many teachers of technical and
professional communication (TPC) who are employed in colleges of the humanities
are concerned with whether their pedagogies and curricula improve students’
abilities to develop the functional, rhetorical, and critical technological literacies (see
Stuart Selber’s [2005] Multiliteracies for a Digital Age for a thorough discussion
of these terms) required of professional communicators in the Digital Age. For
the extent to which TPC students make meaningful use of the information and
communication technologies (ICTs) pervading their workplaces after graduation
is in part a function of how technology was integrated into their programs of study.
By meaningful use, I refer to a situation in which “the user exercises a degree of
control and choice over technology and content” (Selwyn, 2004, p. 352). Students’
technical competencies and knowledge-part of their ability to exercise “control
and choice”—have a bearing on their success in the workplace. As such, TPC
programs should be taking a close look at what professional communicators need
to know and do in the workplace; what and how their students are learning about
technology; and how curricula can better support students in their acquisition of
necessary technical competencies and thinking skills, such as critical awareness,
analytical thinking, and rhetorical understanding.
