[ATTW-L] Criteria and Competencies for TPC Program Evaluations

[Tharon Howard]

Dear Colleagues,

I'm a member of a task force created by the Executive Committee of the CPTSC which has been tasked with creating an external program review service that Technical and Professional Communication programs can use when their departments or programs undergo external evaluations for accreditation, certification, or other reviews. I'm writing on behalf of the task force to request your assistance.

Early on, we recognized that most departments and programs undergo some form of an annual internal evaluation in which they seek to demonstrate to their local administration that they are meeting their pedagogical and programmatic goals. Many of these involve creating a list of core "competencies" and/or SLO's which graduates of the programs should demonstrate. At my school, for example, we expect our professional communication graduates to demonstrate six competencies. These include:


  1.  The ability to apply Visual Communication theories to multimodal design practices
  2.  Sufficient knowledge of Scholarship and Empirical Research Design methods to apply them critically
  3.  The ability to apply classical and modern Rhetorical Theory to contemporary professional communication practices
  4.  A thorough and productive knowledge of Professional Communication processes, procedures, and practices in both workplace and academic contexts
  5.  Demonstrable technological and media production literacies
  6.  Outstanding writing and editing skills

In order to gain a broader understanding of TPC programs, we are conducting this informal survey of other programs and competencies being used in the community. Consequently, we're asking you to please take a few minutes to share what you're using for program evaluation at your local institution with us. Please note that we're not planning to use any of the information we collect to publish our findings; instead, we're just attempting to verify that our approach to the external review service we hope to create for our field has merit. Our goal is to create a review service which we can present at the CPTSC conference in October for critique.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Tharon Howard,
tharon at clemson.edu<mailto:tharon at clemson.edu>
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