Effective User Experience in Online Technical Communication Courses: Employing Multiple Methods within Organizational Contexts to Assess Usability

In teaching online technical communication courses, shaping an electronic interface requires extensive consideration of the user experience, both for students and for faculty members who design and teach the courses. Technical communication faculty members should provide strong examples of effective user experiences and should be leaders in making the interfaces of online learning management systems as usable as possible. Principles of usability designed for general web sites may or may not apply to learning management systems designed for educational purposes. In order to create effective online technical communication courses, one needs to consider both usability concerns and pedagogical concerns. To assess the usability and pedagogical effectiveness of online courses, faculty members may use indirect means such as heuristic analyses. In addition, they may use direct means such as usability testing, student feedback, and analytic tools. Each approach has advantages as well as limitations. Faculty members will gain the richest information through using multiple approaches. In assessing usability and pedagogical effectiveness, faculty members also need to consider the situational constraints and resources in their unique contexts. Understanding and adapting their approaches to use resources well and to work within constraints will benefit their abilities to enhance their student users' experiences with online courses

Scientific writing: a randomized controlled trial comparing standard and on-line instruction

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Writing plays a central role in the communication of scientific ideas and is therefore a key aspect in researcher education, ultimately determining the success and long-term sustainability of their careers. Despite the growing popularity of e-learning, we are not aware of any existing study comparing on-line vs. traditional classroom-based methods for teaching scientific writing.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Forty eight participants from a medical, nursing and physiotherapy background from US and Brazil were randomly assigned to two groups (n = 24 per group): An on-line writing workshop group (on-line group), in which participants used virtual communication, google docs and standard writing templates, and a standard writing guidance training (standard group) where participants received standard instruction without the aid of virtual communication and writing templates. Two outcomes, manuscript quality was assessed using the scores obtained in Six subgroup analysis scale as the primary outcome measure, and satisfaction scores with Likert scale were evaluated. To control for observer variability, inter-observer reliability was assessed using Fleiss's kappa. A post-hoc analysis comparing rates of communication between mentors and participants was performed. Nonparametric tests were used to assess intervention efficacy.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Excellent inter-observer reliability among three reviewers was found, with an Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) agreement = 0.931882 and ICC consistency = 0.932485. On-line group had better overall manuscript quality (p = 0.0017, SSQSavg score 75.3 ± 14.21, ranging from 37 to 94) compared to the standard group (47.27 ± 14.64, ranging from 20 to 72). Participant satisfaction was higher in the on-line group (4.3 ± 0.73) compared to the standard group (3.09 ± 1.11) (p = 0.001). The standard group also had fewer communication events compared to the on-line group (0.91 ± 0.81 vs. 2.05 ± 1.23; p = 0.0219).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our protocol for on-line scientific writing instruction is better than standard face-to-face instruction in terms of writing quality and student satisfaction. Future studies should evaluate the protocol efficacy in larger longitudinal cohorts involving participants from different languages.</p

Chilling-Dependent Release of Seed and Bud Dormancy in Peach Associates to Common Changes in Gene Expression

Reproductive meristems and embryos display dormancy mechanisms in specialized structures named respectively buds and seeds that arrest the growth of perennial plants until environmental conditions are optimal for survival. Dormancy shows common physiological features in buds and seeds. A genotype-specific period of chilling is usually required to release dormancy by molecular mechanisms that are still poorly understood. In order to find common transcriptional pathways associated to dormancy release, we analyzed the chilling-dependent expression in embryos of certain genes that were previously found related to dormancy in flower buds of peach. We propose the presence of short and long-term dormancy events affecting respectively the germination rate and seedling development by independent mechanisms. Short periods of chilling seem to improve germination in an abscisic acid-dependent manner, whereas the positive effect of longer cold treatments on physiological dwarfing coincides with the accumulation of phenylpropanoids in the seed

Readers&apos; Expectations And Writers&apos; Goals In The Late Age Of Print

Most of us are very comfortable acknowledging that reading and writing electronic texts is now firmly a well-established part of our everyday life, but we only occasionally examine the generational differences between our grandparents&apos; notions of text and our children&apos;s. This is largely because our demographic is a transitional one, caught between a well-learned familiarity with hardcopy texts and the challenge of intense movements to online environments. This paper traces our movement from hardcopy texts to digital texts, and speculates about how readers&apos; and writers&apos; expectations of texts are being transformed by emerging technologies. Specifically, digital texts are erasing traditional distinctions between written and spoken discourse, increasing the interconnectedness of texts, increasing the demand for user control over texts, integrating various modes of communication, and intensifying the relationship between readers and writers. KEYWORDS Electronic Texts; Literacy; Hypermedi..