Textbooks versus technology: teaching professional writing to the next generation of technical communicators

The study used quantitative and qualitative measures to determine differences in learning outcomes between two sections of an advanced technical writing course taught by the same instructor. The instructor used traditional textbook methods in one and technology-enhanced methods in the other. The findings upheld those of previous studies in that students in the experimental group rated both the course and their learning higher than that of their counterparts in the control group. Although fewer significant differences than expected resulted from the many measures taken, substantive positive differences in the writing submitted by students in the experimental group did occur. In order for such changes in performance to emerge as statistically significant differences, evaluation criteria for technical communication students may need to change.