Communication – Contemplating Writing

Finally Submitted!

Thankfully, our virtual team project was finally submitted on Monday. This project was a roller-coaster and I found the student experience very different from the workplace. The deliverable was very simple, but the journey had many elements and overall, I feel this comprehensive project is worth including in our MA program. Project management, collaboration with colleagues, communication skills, use of technology, writing, editing, translating, critical thinking and graphic design were among the skills needed on the team for a successful outcome.

The 4 C’s of Education, certainly needed on this project

What new skills skills have I developed?

I have a better understanding of how to write for translation from working on this project. It’s an important skill for technical communicators and something I have never thought about before.

I wrote part of the instructions and I know I did a good job, there was only one edit, however, I did learn from our editors on this project. They did a great job creating a style guide once they realised how disparate some of the writing was and worked hard to make the document feel like it came from one writer. They were meticulous with wording and taught me how to keep everything consistent throughout the document and eliminate unnecessary words. This is something I have been working on since September!

I have also learned how to approach project management and clearer guidelines should have been set out from the start. I found this great article on creating a style guide, design information and documenting the process which would have been a really useful guide for us.

Leadership on our project

We had a leader for each university on our team and in hindsight we should have had an overall project manager. As the team leader for the UL side I got the project started and created a project plan. As we had no overall manager, checking in with everyone took a lot of time and the editors were left with a lot of the decision making. One of the Paris students never engaged so their leader was our only contact point for translation. In Florida one of the students was very engaged and the others less so.

Project Management tools & collaboration with translators

Overall the tools worked well. We used Big Blue Button for calls and Slack to collaborate. I also developed a Gantt chart at the start of the project which clearly showed the due dates, holidays and task list which was very useful.

The lead translator was on the initial conference calls, but she had no experience ‘writing for translation’ and had no advice to offer. She was involved in choosing the topic and took a step back during the writing process. Engagement was poor during the translation phase until the very end of the project where she needed a couple of clarifications on sentences using Slack. Slack was our main collaboration took and generally worked well. It did get a little confusing at times and would have worked better with an updated action list. Slack was useful for feedback between the writers and editors and we set up private channels for this task.

We also used Google Drive for storing each version of the document and adding comments for editing which worked well in conjunction with Slack. No-one else on the team had access to the graphics tool chosen by the designer, until late in the project when one of the Florida students got access through her workplace so she could make necessary changes.

Creativity

Freedom to choose a topic, assign roles, select tools and develop our own plan is one of the strengths of this project. It forces collaboration and decision making from the beginning and teams must take responsibility for choosing their own path. It’s also a great opportunity to use new tools for a real project.

The graphic design element of the project should have been more creative. This never happened on our team unfortunately, one of the students had experience in graphics and put himself forward for that role. There was little engagement with the rest of the team on design and most of the feedback was never implemented.

The most valuable lesson I learned

I have managed my own team in the past, but never multidisciplinary teams. This project has taught me the importance of teams having clear guidelines on everyone’s roles within the team and exactly what is expected of each person, how they will communicate and collaborate with the rest of the team. Additionally, having a key decision maker in the group would have been useful for final sign-off of the document at various stages.

What to do differently

Hindsight is fantastic and having two graphic designers on the team should have made a big difference to the success of the project.

A master document to track all actions, no matter how small they were, would have worked well. There were times towards the end of the project when members were making the final updates which had been agreed on Slack, yet some of the tasks weren’t complete or there was confusion over exactly what needed to be done.

A style sheet was developed after the first writing phase. This would have been more useful before we started writing.

Motivation during the project

I was really motivated for most of this project, as we had good engagement, created solid relationships and developed well-written instructions. I like being part of a team and sharing achievements is great when everyone is working hard to realise the goal. At times it was difficult to keep motivated as we were so badly let down by the graphics designer towards the end of the project. It was really demotivating for the editors to have all their work ignored on the first design draft and I felt their pain. The designer going for two weeks holidays without giving notice to the rest of the team and saying they were only putting 20% effort into this project because that was all it’s worth was certainly unhelpful. I am disappointed with our final submission, which is demotivating for many on our team due to the amount of time spent on the project and we know this will affect our grade.

Completing projects with remote workers will be part of everyone’s future and I’m glad we had this opportunity. I feel more competent about anticipating issues that may come up in the future in a similar project. Those who disengaged from this process certainly lost out on valuable learning.

References

Hollis Weber, J. (2011)Developing a Departmental Style Guide TechWhirl.com, available at https://techwhirl.com/developing-a-departmental-style-guide/ [last accessed 1 April 2019]

Wrapping up the Virtual Team Project

This is the penultimate week of our virtual team project and it’s been testing for most of our group. Perfecting teamwork is a challenge. We have had various levels of engagement over the past few weeks. Some team members have worked really hard on the project, I think the editors probably contributed the most. Some teams members are great at keeping in touch on Slack, others don’t. We have had sporadic updates from one of the French team. The other student hasn’t engaged.

Our graphic designer changed all the text and left us with a document that we couldn’t edit and went on holidays. That was the low point until he commented that he was only giving 20% to the project as that’s all its worth. We’ve sunk even lower.

One of the US students, who has been great throughout the project got access to the editing software and had a list of issues to fix. Great news, until she sent back the document with graphics are all over the place, no numbering for each step and section 3 was still incorrect. It’s now 48 hours before the deadline and we have no cover page, no alignment on the graphics, no numbering and most of us are losing the will!

I understand why we are doing this project and ultimately it’s very beneficial. It’s also very frustrating. Cleary and Slattery’s (2009) article on virtual teamwork has “uncooperative and non-participating team members” recorded first on their list of challenges for students on this project. My experience defiantly concurs. Work experience has also been a challenge for us. Apart from one or two part-time students there is very little experience on our team with the different stages of this project. In hindsight we should have designated a project manager rather than a project lead from each site.

What has been good to see over the past few days is most people are pulling together and some of the student who rarely engaged much are now asking how they can help. Hopefully our document will be in better shape by Monday evening. After all the planning, writing, editing and time spent it would be a shame if it’s not at least 80% good enough.

References

Cleary, Y. and Slattery, D. (2009) ‘Virtual teams in higher education: challenges and rewards for teachers and students’, in 2009 The All Ireland Society for Higher Education, available: https://ulir.ul.ie/bitstream/handle/10344/7268/Slattery_2009_Virtual.pdf?sequence=1 [last accessed 23rd March 2019]

Using Slack for your Virtual Team

Virtual team working is becoming more popular in technical communication, e-learning and many other disciplines. Whether it is the ability to work from home some days or a fully distributed team of co-workers or clients, we should think about management of people, process, leadership and tools. A good collaboration tool can help your team achieve higher levels of engagement and work ethic than an office based team.

In our virtual team project we are using Slack, which is a cloud based team collaboration tool. We use the free version of Slack, there are also two options where you can pay monthly or annually for premium level products. In the free version of Slack you can have unlimited members, however, it does have some limitations. You can only voice or video call one person, so you will need another tool for conferencing. The storage is limited to 5GB for uploads across the team and searching previous messages is restricted to the last 10,000. The free version was perfect for what we need and what I really like about it, is that it doesn’t keep reminding you that you are using a free version and doesn’t constantly send you special offer emails to upgrade.

So how does Slack work?

Slack is a messaging tool on steroids. Teams or organisations set up channels for different projects or tasks. You can have invitation only channels for certain projects that some members don’t need to see. We used this in the editing phase of the project, where feedback was shared between the editors and each writer privately and it worked really well. You also have a direct messaging channel with each person for private interactions.

Messages can include documents which is really useful or links to other tools. You will know you have a new message as the channel or direct message will be in bold. You can setup notifications if you wish, I chose not to. The use of emojis is encouraged and really useful if you want to give an idea the thumbs up or down. You have the option of starting a message thread to link conversations together which helps keeping track of discussions. You can also set reminders to follow-up on a message or pin important messages.

Why you should use Slack

Important Considerations

Teams will need to learn how to use it and decide what to use it for. Think about naming conventions for your channels to make it more intuitive. We had too many channels on our project and some weren’t used. There is an informative analytics space where you can see what channels are being used and when. This could be useful for project managers in larger projects or organisations. You may want to have a ‘water cooler’ channel for chit chat. We did this on our project and it was used sporadically. I feel it’s important for teams to work out how to engage on Slack, for example, deciding when to use private messages or encouraging everyone to set their status if they are away from the office or on vacation.

What else is good?

You can integrate up to ten applications on Slack. We are used Google Drive and Survey Monkey which proved really practical. There is also a whole section on keyboard shortcuts. Anyone born in the 70’s will love these! The help section works well, in fact every time you log in you get a tip from your friends at Slack. These are worth reading as you may get “you look good today” or “Happy Friday” messages which are so much nicer than a traditional loading screen.

What’s not so good?

There were a few niggly things. I keep hitting the return key on my keyboard, which posts my message. It’s annoying. Luckily you can edit your message and post again.

You can set follow-up reminders for messages, however, there is no task management element, you will need another application for that. Sometimes channels do get out of hand and are difficult to follow.
The free version is perfect for our college project but could be insufficient in the long run, especially if you are sharing lots of documents.

Overall, it’s a great tool, it looks cool, promotes social interaction and should cut down on the need for meetings to keep everyone in the loop. That’s defiantly a winner!

The editor in Technical Communication

Last week, after learning the basics of how to write a document for translation, I started to think about the next step. We have two editors on our virtual team, both of whom are working in the industry and sound like they know what they are doing, but what actually is the role of an editor in technical communications and what makes a good one?

Rude and Eaton (2010) believe that the editor is a specialist role and they are experts in communication, language and the needs of the audience. They also state that a good editor can evaluate the big picture as well as the finer details. These experts are just what we need on our team as we had five writers from different continents working on the same document. Our finished product needs to have one voice, correct grammar and be useful to our target audience.

The Audience

The editor needs to consider the documents purpose and how the readers are going to use it. The document needs to be structured so that readers can find information quickly. Does the document need a hierarchy to make it easier on the reader to find simple information first? The document also needs to function correctly. Are the steps in the right order? I know when the editors were reviewing our written instructions the functional edit took longer than expected.

Safety notices must always be included and the editor should also be graphically aware, not experts but have an understanding of how the design elements will work with the rest of the document.

Working with the writers

In our project, the editors were involved from the start and collaborated on key decisions to be made regarding the written instructions. They also gave advice and feedback during the writing process which was very beneficial and they drafted style tips for us to follow. They then set up a private channel on Slack for each writer to receive edit feedback on their first draft. This process has worked well even though there were delays with some of the writers. It’s important to be tactful when giving feedback to a writer. I like the praise sandwich. This ensures that plenty of positive feedback is given surrounding the negative information. New writers will make lots of mistakes at the start, the editor needs to recognise this and give them praise where its deserved.

Getting feedback from the editors

I’m sure it’s frustrating for writers who have spent lots of time working on a document to get it back from the editor with loads of notes. Take the time to go through the notes carefully. The notes are not personal, the editor has a duty to make the end product as good as it can be. If you’re unsure about some of the comments, ask for clarification. Work through the changes. You will end up with a better document and you may learn something along the way.

References:

Rude, C. and Eaton, A. (2010) Technical Editing, 5th Ed, Longman

Consequentialism and the ethics of Technical Communication

We had a really interesting discussion this morning in TW5212 around ethics in theory and practice relating to technical communication. We know that there has been a discourse around ethics since Socrate’s philosophy of good and justice almost 2,500 years ago. He believed a sense of community, friendship and being loyal to the truth was important for humankind.

Around that time Mohist consequentialism also emerged. This philosophy evaluates the moral worth of an action, based on how much it contributes to the welfare of a state. This was very advanced for the time. In the 21st century countries around the world are struggling with these ethical decisions.

While watching ‘Africa’ with Ade Adepitan last night on BBC, I was considering the ethics of the decisions these emerging African nations are making. In Ethiopia, he visited an area of magnificent natural beauty with large rivers and millions of trees that the government is planning to tear down to build a dam. Trees, animals and villages will be destroyed and displaced. The benefits will be power and irrigation. The population of Africa is due to grow by one billion by 2050 and 50% of Ethiopians don’t have access to electricity. We know the dam will have positive consequences but will they surpass the negative ones and make the state a better place?

Closer to home, the western world is trying to deal with cyberethics and the ethics around big data. Can we quantify how technology contributes to the state and the globe? Herschel and Miori in their 2017 article on Ethics and Big Data write that we cannot determine what the positive and negative consequences of big data are. How can we measure these consequences if they cannot be defined? Their study concluded that big data had little to recommend itself from an ethical perspective.

Thankfully ethical considerations in technical communication are more black and white. Our ethical standards are based on rules of confidentiality, legality, honest, quality, fairness and professionalism. What strikes me about these principles is that they apply to all aspects of our lives. They are the backbone of society and how we are taught to behave from our parents, our educators and the whole community.

As Socrates declared, we need to be loyal to the truth. In technical communications, this means serving our employers and clients as long as they are consistent with the public good. We also need to ensure that we are serving the public with the information they need e.g. safety documentation to keep them safe when using a product. I’m hoping that my future career will be easy to navigate from an ethical perspective. I’m just going to treat others as I would like to be treated.

References

Africa (2019) BBC2, 17 Feb, 21:00
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002p4d

Ethical principles: Society for Technical Communication (1998) stc.org, available: www.stc.org/about-stc/ethical-principles [accessed 18 Feb 2019].

Herschel, R. and Miori, V. (2017) ‘Ethics & Big Data’. Technology in Society. 49. [online]. Available from: http://search.proquest.com/docview/1952473313/.

Technical Writing for Translation

Our virtual team project has been moving along nicely. Some students are keeping to fringes, however, they are getting the tasks completed on time. We’re getting to know each other a little better also. This week we focused on writing the instructions for how to use Twitter. Nobody had worked on this type of project before, so we were unsure how to approach it. We had 4 writers, so the topics were divided up. We agreed to write in US English and for the desktop version of Twitter.

All the first drafts were so different in words, voice, style and format, how would we even start putting the final document together. Of course, what we should have considered was a style guide or at least some basic tips on writing instructions for translation. Towards the end of the week, our editing team devised a list of tips we should follow when revising our first draft. They make so much sense. Hindsight is a great thing. There is nothing like learning from your mistakes.

My tips for writing instructions for translation:

Write short simple sentences in the active voice. Fewer words also keep your translation costs down.
Use plain English e.g. ‘enter’ instead of ‘input’.
Use terminology consistently.
Use visuals as much as possible.
Leave plenty of white space to allow space for longer translations.
Decide what will stay in English e.g. Twitter, Follow.
Avoid idioms and acronyms.

Socioemotional Communication in Virtual Teams

In week 2 of our project we made a lot of progress on certain levels. We had a team agreement and an approved list of technology. We had team roles defined and an overall strategy. The focus for this week was for team members to engage on Slack and select a topic for our instruction document. A call was organised to choose the topic and plan for the next steps. Not everyone would make the call, however, most students had expressed their preferred topic online and Setting up Twitter for a New User was agreed on.

Although there was a good collaborative atmosphere on the call, discussions were largely task and procedure orientated. Since reading Flammia et. al.’s article on socioemotional communication strategies I have realised that this aspect of virtual teamwork can be improved on in the coming weeks. The research found that students who worked on socioemotional communication enjoyed the project more than others. I start to think about how we can develop better connections among the group.

I understand that we are somewhere between the forming and storming phases of establishment and we have had fabulous introductory emails, students sharing photos on their Slack profiles and lots of emojis and thumbs up. Feeling that we need to go a little deeper I look online for some ideas and found an interesting blog on the topic; https://blog.retrium.com/10-ways-to-improve-virtual-collaboration.

‘Create virtual water coolers’ was one of the suggestions. My teammate who setup Slack added a ‘random’ channel for this purpose, but we need to start using it. Managing time zones and schedules was another idea. This week we are gathering students available time, so we can best schedule conferences. Calls are currently recorded, and minutes are circulated which is great but being present is so much better.

We probably just need a little more time, chats about the weekend and some minions memes!

References

Flammia, Madelyn et al. (2010) Leadership Roles, Socioemotional Communication Strategies, and Technology Use of Irish and US Students in Virtual Teams. Professional Communication, IEEE Transactions on. [Online] 53 (2), 89–101.