Jason W. Ellis – Page 3 – Fall 2019 Technical Writing ENG2575 E270 with Professor Ellis

Project: 1500-2000-Word Instructional or Training Manual, Phase Three

Today, we’re focusing on your instruction manuals. We will go over the general layout and how to publish your work.

NB: I want you to produce the highest quality instruction manual possible given the time that we have available. Therefore, I am extended the deadline for this assignment to Nov. 12.

We will be using Google Docs to create your instruction manual. Use this document as a model for your instruction manual.

You will be able to share your document and link to it from our OpenLab site. Use the directions below to submit your work.

1. Give your Google Doc a descriptive title.

After you’ve completed your instruction manual, you need to get a sharable link to it for your OpenLab post.

After copying the link to your instruction manual, create an OpenLab post for your project. Follow these steps:

Confirm that your post appears on our OpenLab site and that the link to your instruction manual on Google Docs works correctly.

Here are some pro tips for using Google Docs:

Use page breaks to separate the sections of your manual.

Check your word count by clicking on Tools > Word count.

Your Name’s Instruction Manual for Assembling a Skateboard

For this project, I created an instruction manual for assembling a skateboard.

Announcement: No Magazine Article for Next Week’s Class, 10/30

During next week’s class, we will focus on the instruction manual project. We will go over how to lay out the instruction manual using Google Docs (make sure you have a Google Account that you are comfortable using with this assignment). To maximize our in-class time on the project, we will not have a beginning of class writing assignment using a magazine article on 10/30. We will resume these assignments the week after next.

Project: 1500-2000-Word Instructional or Training Manual, Phase Two

During today’s class, we’re going to focus on the main components of your instruction manual and do the brainstorming work needed to identify what should be included in your instructional manual. In our next class, we’ll focus more on the formatting and submission of your deliverable.

Let’s look at the sections of the Online Technical Communication textbook on Instructions, User Guides, and Standard Operating Procedures.

Before class, you found sample instructions and user guides to use as models. We can take a look at some online-based guides that I published on my blog here, too.

Opportunities: James Burke’s Connections TV Series

James Burke is a British historian of science and technology. He wrote and starred in a several documentary television series that shared his research with a general audience. One of those series is called Connections. It explores how much of the modern world’s culture and technology are interconnected and interdependent. While the show is a little dated, its overarching message is worth learning and thinking about. This first episode looks at the New York City blackout of 1965. You can view it here on Archive.org.

Announcement: Important Latin Terms and Abbreviations

You might have noticed in my writing and lecturing, I use a few Latin terms that you should know:

NB, nota bene. This means “note well” or “pay attention to this.”

e.g., exempli gratia. This means “for the sake of an example” or “for example.” It is used to show examples.

i.e., id est. This means “that is.” It is used to explain or restate or clarify a point.

Daily Writing: Brief Article Summary Memo

For today’s beginning of class writing assignment, we will focus on time. Before coming into class, you should have read your article and thought about its contents. You will have 30 minutes from the beginning of class to complete and post your memo as a comment to this post. Use the following example as a guide for your memo:

TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: Today's Date
SUBJECT: Brief Summary of an Article About X (replace X with the main topic)

One sentence describing the purpose of this memo (e.g., I wanted to bring your attention to this article about X--again, replace X with the topic).

Two-three sentences summarizing the main point of the article. These sentences should be all in your own words. No quotes and no paraphrasing.

APA citation for your article. Look at the example, "Article in a Magazine" on this page.

Project: 1500-2000-Word Instructional or Training Manual, Phase One

Individual: 1500-2000-Word Instructional or Training Manual, 15%
Individually, you will write a 1500-2000-word instructional or training manual that demonstrates: 1. ability to explain a task/process in clear, concise language. selection and definition of appropriate terminology and concepts. 3. awareness of the intended user/audience. 4. knowledge of instructional manual format. All diagrams, illustrations, or photos must be created by the student and integrated into his or her manual. Any outside sources cited should be documented according to APA format.

Your project deliverable is due before class on Nov. 5 according to the syllabus.

Instructional or Training Manual

For our purposes, we will say instructional manuals are external facing, meaning they are meant for end users, customers, or clients.
Training manuals are internal facing documents, meaning they are meant for employees, contractors, and colleagues.
You choose your audience (internal or external).
Its word count should be 1500-2000 words.
Combine words with pictures, illustrations (drawings), and/or screenshots. Any images that you use must be created by you or taken by you.
Clearly define the purpose of your manual. What does it teach? What does it help a person do? What task or tasks does it help someone complete in a straightforward and easy manner?
Telling versus showing. Always aim for showing, but provide the telling as context, clarification, and additional information.
Use the body of your document for writing, steps, etc. Don’t be afraid to include text boxes and end notes.
Provide a cover sheet, table of contents, introduction/purpose, and glossary of important terms. It can be as few or as many pages as needed.
Be consistent with your explanations and learn from similar kinds of manuals about what terms you should be using to explain how to do something (e.g., tapping, pressing, clicking, holding, dragging, typing, etc.).

Let’s look at some examples (using Google, enter terms including “instructions,” “user manual or guide,” and “filetype:pdf” modifier to find others).

Chemical Safety Manual for Small Businesses (telling)
IKEA Billy Bookcase (showing)
LEGO Instructions (listing of Millennium Falcon sets) (showing)
Training Express’ Windows 98 Level I Training (telling and showing)
Beats Studio Quick Start Guide (telling and showing)
Official User Guide to Mint Linux (telling and showing)
Suse Raspberry Pi Quick Start (telling and showing)

Find your own examples for ideas and inspiration. The reading for this section of the class has to do with your own research into what instruction manuals look like.

Think about what you know enough about that you can teach it to someone else and it is something that you want to include in your professional portfolio.

Of course, choose a task or process that you have realistic access to the hardware, software, etc. that you will need for creating your instruction manual.

As you write and revise your instructions, you will want to test them with the intended audience to ensure that they are correct and easy to understand. Obtaining user feedback ensures that your instructions work, but if they don’t, you can use feedback to revise your instructions accordingly.

For next week, identify what you want to write a set of instructions for this project, and find three example instructions online (these could be webpages or PDFs) or print that you plan to use as models. Create a short memo addressed to Prof. Ellis to record this information (your topic and APA Bibliographic entries for your models–look at Purdue OWL APA Reference List for books (no author) and electronic sources. Post it as a comment to this blog post before class next week.

Daily Writing: Addressing the Needs of Your Audience

After watching the video above, your first writing task today is to summarize the magazine article that you read for today’s class or some topic found in the article for three two different audiences: a child (~10 years old) and a peer (someone your age, in college). Write your summary in a memo format and include an APA bibliographic entry at its end. You should not use any quotes. All of the summaries should be in your own words.

TO: Professor Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: 10/15/2019
SUBJECT: Summarizing for Different Audiences

Write one sentence explaining what your memo is doing (see assignment above, but put in your own words).

Begin the next paragraph with: "Summary for a child:" and write a 2-3 sentence summary of the article or a topic in the article. Avoid jargon. Explain what words mean. Try to connect what you are writing about to ideas and concepts that a child might already understand.

Begin the next paragraph with: "Summary for a peer:" and write 2-3 sentence summary of the article or a topic in the article. Your language can be more advanced and employ jargon, but you might still need to define some terms or ideas. Connect what you are explaining to more advanced or relevant ideas that your audience might know.

APA Bibliographic Entry for your magazine article goes here. Open a new tab and search for "Purdue OWL APA" and then click "Reference List: Articles in Periodicals" if you need help with formatting.

Copy-and-paste your memo into a comment made to this blog post.

Notes from class:

Tips for conveying information to different audiences:

Breaking something complex into its constituent parts.
Less jargon, more description.
Analogies (using something familiar as a model)
Metaphors and similes (this is like that)
Examples

Opportunity: Note Taking Workshop, Oct. 10, 1:00pm, Namm 601A

This note taking workshop is highly recommended. Good note taking can make all the difference in your academic success. Details are below.

Good note taking can help students perform better on assignments and tests. It can also lead to a deeper and more complete understanding of course material. In this workshop designed especially for students, we review and practice some theories on note taking as well as introduce a proven, successful method for note taking (the “Cornell method”).
Thursday, October 10, 1:00 PM, Namm 601A No RSVP necessary Questions: Rebecca Mazumdar rmazumdar@citytech.cuny.edu or Samar ElHitti selhitti@citytech.cuny.edu

Author: Jason W. Ellis