A Critical and Ethical Approach to Teaching Genre Change Awareness: A Case Study of an Elective Engineering Communication Course

This research suggests a critical and ethical approach to teaching genre change awareness in an elective engineering communication course. Through a grounded theory approach to analyzing the participants’ design rationale essays, five categories of themes emerged, which consist of constraints of genres of resume and LinkedIn, the technological affordances of the website, genre conventions and rhetorical choices, design choices, and rhetorical purpose of creating the professional website. The findings demonstrate that this critical and ethical approach that engages students in rhetorical analysis of genres, genre conventions and rhetorical situation can help students have critical perspectives on genres, genre constraints and choices, evolution or flexibility when migrating to new digital media, and awareness of ethics of web accessibility.