Against the Reading Response: Digital Meaning Making Through Social Annotation and Authentic Content Genres

This paper calls for technical and professional communication (TPC) teachers and researchers to reexamine the importance of reading and the practices and genres that can be assigned to enhance student interaction with course content. While a renewed interest in “critical” and “mindful” reading has taken hold in various fields, TPC has not actively intervened in reading research since the rise of mobile computing. To reopen the conversation about reading in TPC teaching and research, we present two technologically mediated alternatives to traditional, linear, alphabetic reading responses: social annotations and authentic content genres. These tasks, we argue, tap into the social nature of reading as a meaning making process. We conclude by calling for more empirical research on reading in pedagogical and professional contexts.