Editing – 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]

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