Technical Writing for Researchers and Graduate Students

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Technical Writingfor Researchers and Graduate
Students

• Spring 2003
• Lincoln Campus
• Instructor Deborah Derrick

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Seminar goals

• To give you tools and strategies for
• Writing useful, concise, readable documents
• Writing efficiently
• Writing to your audience

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Seminar focus

• Content Selecting and organizing information
• Readability Applying language and tools to help
  the reader understand
• Efficiency Applying productivity strategies to
  the writing process

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You will receive

• Checklists, models and examples that you can
  adapt to your writing
• A concise set of guidelines and principles you
  can use as a reference
• Help on any writing projects in progress (on a
  request basis)

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You will not get

• An English 101 course
• Remedial instruction in grammar, spelling or
  punctuation.

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How the seminar will run

• 15 weeks, Mondays and Wednesdays
• Sessions divided into units (see agenda)
• Lecture format plus hands-on exercises

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How importantare good writing skills?
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Good writing skills

• Increase your marketability
• Increase your advancement potential
• Help save you time when you write

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• Overall, researchers and their supervisors spend
  at least 20 to 40 percent of their time working
  with reports, proposals, memos and other
  documents.

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What supervisors say

• Information is hard to read and understand
  quickly
• Material is poorly organized
• Sentences are poorly constructed
• Incorrect word choice jargon
• Documents are too long
• Document focus is unclear

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Researchers need help with

• Deciding what and how much information to include
• Organizing documents
• Figuring out what the audience needs to know
• Structuring easy-to-read sentences
• Getting started writing efficiently

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• Assess yourself
• What are your main problems with writing?

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Unit 1 Organizing

• OUTLINE OF TOPICS
• Why start with organization?
• A suggested organizational method
• How it works
• How to apply it to different documents

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Why organize?

• It provides a framework on which to hang ideas.
• It presents ideas in a logical, coherent sequence
  that is easily understood.
• It helps you decide what content to include in
  your document.
• It helps stimulate ideas.

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A top-down approach

• In organizing your document, you should follow a
  problem-solving approach that is already familiar
  to researchers.
• This framework will help you organize your notes
  and thoughts before you write.
• You can use it for both technical and business
  documents.

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Top-down organization

• This organizational scheme is based on sciences
  5-part method for recording and reporting
  experiments
• Define objective
• Select apparatus
• Determine method
• Make observations
• Draw conclusions

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Top-down organization

• By translating these 5 scientific terms into
  technical/business terms, we have a framework
  that can be applied to both the academic and
  business environments.

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Top-down organization

• It uses sciences problem-solving structure for
  conveying technical information.
• It adds a parallel structure for interpreting
  technical information in business terms.

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Top-down organization

• SCIENTIFIC
• Objective
• Apparatus
• Method
• Observations
• Conclusions

• TECHNICAL/BUSINESS
• Problem
• Scope and goals
• Solution
• Results
• Conclusions and Recommendations

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Top-down organization

• By contracting, expanding, using as-is or
  otherwise modifying this structure, you can use
  it to organize the main research-related
  documents you need to write.

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Applying the top-down method

• This method can be applied to
• Memos or business letters
• Single-task research reports
• Multi-task research reports
• Progress reports
• Proposals
• Other technical papers

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Memo or business letter

• Problem, need, or issue
• Solution
• Results expected or actions to be taken

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Single-task research report

• Problem
• Scope
• Solution
• Results
• Conclusions

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Example of single-task report

• Researchers were asked to solve a specific
  problem in the production of a product.
• Heres how the body of the report might look from
  a technical standpoint.

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1. Problem

• What is the specific problem that is being
  addressed in this research?
• Why is the problem important (from a technical
  and a practical/business standpoint)?

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2. Scope

• What has been done before to try to fix the
  problem (literature review).
• What technical factors or issues had to be
  addressed to resolve this problem?

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3. Solution

• What approach was taken to resolve the problem?
• What specific task(s) were performed?
• Did the research proceed as planned or were there
  unexpected difficulties?
• How were these difficulties resolved?

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4. Results

• What results were obtained?
• How good were these results?

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5. Conclusions/Recommendations

• Can the results be directly applied to resolve
  the problem?
• What technical steps should be taken to implement
  these results?
• Has this research yielded other ideas for that
  should be followed up in future research?

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Multi-task research report

• A multi-task report may require expansion of this
  framework.
• The following pages give an example of the
  components of this type of report.

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1. Needs, problems, benefits

• What needs prompted the companys (sponsors)
  funding this research?
• What problems are being addressed?
• What opportunities or benefits will the sponsor
  receive if the research project succeeds?

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2. Scope and goals

• What has been done before to try to solve this
  problem?
• What specific technical elements of the problem
  were researched?
• What technical goals did the research attempt to
  achieve?

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3. Solution

• What approach was selected to solve the specific
  problems and achieve the identified goals?
• How did it compare to other possible approaches?
• What specific tasks did the research include?

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Solution (continued)

• What difficulties were encountered? How were they
  solved?
• What shortcuts or other unexpected advantages
  were found that could be useful in other research
  projects?

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4. Results

• What results did each task yield?
• From a scientific viewpoint, how good and
  complete were these results?

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5. Conclusions

• To what extent did the research solve its stated
  problems and achieve its intended goals?
• What future research should be done?

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6. Recommendations

• What future research in this area should be
  conducted?
• What steps could be taken in future projects to
  prevent the difficulties found in this project
  and to improve results?
• What actions should be taken in future projects
  to utilize the shortcuts and other efficiencies
  found during this project?

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Variations

• The basic top-down scheme lends itself to other
  variations, such as
• Need
• Problem, scope, and goals
• Solution
• Results
• Conclusions

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Progress reports

• Engineers (in business and academe) often need to
  write quarterly or monthly progress reports on
  projects to funding agencies or clients.
• Here is a simple way to organize a monthly
  progress report, based on the planned tasks
  outlined in your proposal or work plan.

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Progress reports (continued)

• Current month
• Solution
• What tasks did you work on?
• What problems, if any, occurred? How were they
  resolved?
• Results
• What main data did you get?
• Were such data expected? If not, what is the
  impact?

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Progress reports

• Next month
• Solution
• What tasks do you plan to do?
• What problems, if any, do you anticipate?
• Results
• What main results do you expect to get?

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Benefits of this scheme

• Each section builds logically on preceding
  sections.
• It can be used for almost all types of documents.
• It can help reveal gaps in logic and data.
• It helps you decide what information is needed.
• It saves you time during the writing process.

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Top-down organization

• A caveat This is a method to help you organize
  your notes and thoughts before you start writing.
  It is NOT a prescribed format or outline.
• Formats vary across disciplines and journals. (We
  will discuss formats in future sessions of this
  seminar.)