[ATTW-L] Reminder: March 20th, Online Symposium: Teaching Technical Communication and Artificial Intelligence

[Mark C.]

Hello,

The Technology, Writing and Culture online symposium will be held on
Wednesday, March 20th from 9:00 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. MST.

Our theme is: Teaching Technical Communication and Artificial Intelligence

The symposium will consist of multiple sessions, and will be delivered as a
series of Microsoft Teams meetings.  In order to add the emails of
participants, it's necessary to use your email address.  To that end, if
you fill out the registration form at this link we can send you session
links and make sure you are able to fully participate.

https://forms.gle/QpNvUcMeGNoEogsE9
Symposium website: https://techwritingculture.de/
Discord backchannel: https://discord.gg/psqxWMtg

Please direct questions to: markuvula at gmail.com

Thanks!

Eugene Crane
Department of English
Utah Valley University

Text working schedule.
We have two keynote speakers and five sessions

Schedule and Events

9:00 Keynote: Dr. Stuart Selber, Penn State

10:00 A1: Innovating Technical Communication Education with AI: Experiences
from Mercer University

Hannah Nabi, Lecturer, Department of Technical Communication, Mercer
University

Bremen Vance, Assistant Professor, Department of Technical Communication,
Mercer University

Pam Estes Brewer, Chair and Professor, Department of Technical
Communication, Mercer University

A discussion of the department’s current initiatives in integrating AI into
its teaching methods and strategic plan. The workshop is intended for
educators, researchers, and practitioners in technical communication and
education technology interested in AI’s role in education. The goals of
this panel discussion are to:


   - Present specific examples of AI use in technical communication
   education.
   - Share outcomes and observations from these AI-integrated teaching
   methods.
   - Discuss the effectiveness of AI tools in student learning and skill
   development.
   - Consider the future role of AI in technical communication education.


11:30 B1: Teaching Authorship in the Age of AI

Yunus Doğan Telliel and Kevin Lewis

In this presentation, we discuss our findings from an ongoing research
study examining students’ perceptions of authorship when working with
generative AI tools in their writing projects. This research focuses on
Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Professional Writing Program, consisting
of a student survey, a faculty survey, and a qualitative study of
AI-related assignments in technical communication courses.

Beyond Perceptions: Surveying Student Experiences with Responsible AI Use
in Writing Courses

John Sherrill and Michael Salvo

This 20-minute presentation will provide instructor and student experiences
working with AI in professional writing courses, including an experience
report of teaching a collaborative report about AI, and preliminary
findings from a mixed-methods survey of student experiences using AI.
Rather than focusing exclusively on student and instructor perceptions
about AI use in the classroom, our presentation challenges common
instructor perceptions about how students may be using generative AI and
LLMs in the classroom by providing experiential and quantitative data about
how AI is shaping professional writing.

Technical Writing and Generative AI: Some takeaways for ethical reflection

Manushri Pandya and Arthur Berger

How are technical writers actually using generative AI?
At times, technical writers report using generative AI in ways that run
counter to prevailing narratives. We hope to use our survey along with
continuous feedback to think more critically about what the core concerns
of the field are to its practitioners, in order to achieve its mission of
“advanc[ing] technical communication as the discipline of transforming
complex information into usable content for products, processes, and
services.” [1] To that end, this presentation seeks to explore and provide
insight into the intersections between AI, its potential impact on the
practice of technical communication, its ethical implications, as well as
its pedagogical applications and/or challenges in technical writing. [1] –
STC mission from https://www.stc.org/about-stc/mission-a-vision/ Note: This
is a collaborative project between Arthur Berger, President STC-Carolina;
Manushri Pandya, PhD Student at NC State.

1:00 C1: A Model for Levels of Autonomy in Technical Communication

Michael J. Klein and Philip L. Frana
Department of Interdisciplinary Liberal Studies
James Madison University

The authors propose a pathway for understanding levels of autonomy in
technical communication, presenting a four-quadrant contextual model for AI
in technical communication: (1) Human beings sharing technical information
with other human beings; (2) Human beings sharing technical information
with artificial intelligences; (3) Artificial intelligences sharing
technical information with human beings; and (4) Artificial intelligences
sharing technical information with other artificial intelligences. The
authors will share examples of humans and machines operating in each
quadrant as well as analyzing the benefits and challenges that surface in
the various relationships.

AI Ethics and (In)Authenticity: Preliminary Investigations of GPTs’
Affordances for Routine Production and Their Shortcomings for Symbolic
Analytic Labor

Paul Hunter and A. Deptula

This presentation builds on findings from our forthcoming article (Deptula
et al., 2024) on AI and authenticity. In that article, we detail how
generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) large language models handle
commonplace TPC concerns: genres, plain language, and
grammatical/mechanical correctness. Our initial analyses reveal that
ChatGPT 3.5, as of August 2023, can produce reasonable outlines for
standard TPC genres (e.g., scientific articles, business proposals, and
feasibility reports), transform sentences according to plain language
conventions (evidenced by Flesch-Kincaid grade level scoring), and help
writers ensure mechanical and grammatical correctness.

2:30 D1: Rhetorical prompt engineering in an era of AI expedience

Bryan Kopp
Chris McCracken
Lindsay Steiner
Louise Zamparutti

We designed a multi-week case study for technical writing students that
incorporates AI into a complex risk-communication scenario. This case study
introduces students to generative text technology through a scaffolded set
of tasks in which they intervene in a classic professional and technical
writing case study—the risk communication surrounding the Three Mile Island
nuclear disaster. Students used ChatGPT to understand the case, to analyze
and revise one of the memos implicated in the meltdown, to document and
reflect on their revision strategies, and to develop a set of best
practices for working with generative AI in technical communication.

4:00 E1: AI for Empathy? AI-Generated Personas and Teaching Design Thinking

Emma Kostopolus

I will discuss how I use AI-generated personas in my Technical Writing and
Editing class, typically populated by students in Engineering Technologies
and Interdisciplinary Studies, two very disparate contexts. I’ll work
through the differences seen when students work with AI personas versus
personas that they themselves generate, and report on how students appear
to use the personas in crafting their midterm project, a recommendation
report specifically intended for university stakeholders.

Artificial Interfaces, Artificial Ideologies: A Visual Rhetorical Analysis
of ChatGPT

Eric York

This presentation reports on a visual rhetorical analysis of ChatGPT’s user
interface (UI) and user experience (UX), including main interface elements
and primary user flows, to reveal and trace the ideologies constructed and
perpetuated in the product design. I explain how the UI and UX of ChatGPT
relies on technical communication concepts of clarity and simplicity
(Kostelnick and Roberts, 1998) to create and perpetuate a corrosive design
philosophy, the most extreme example of extreme usability (Dilger, 2006)
that undermines both literacy and design, and I discuss the pedagogical and
programmatic implications of this finding, arguing for embodied rhetorics
that can provide means of resistance and a both/and way to accommodate the
rapid changes AI will usher in.

5:30 Keynote: Dr. Patrick Corbett, New York City College of Technology

Slightly prettier and more frequently updated schedule
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TRpIF94GcWawHFZFMy6UoK9VaW5uDCMQ7C9VKLLedNI/edit?usp=sharing>
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