Book Review: Teaching Business,Technical and Academic Writing Online and Onsite: A Writing Pedagogy Sourcebook by Vengadasalam S. S.

The job market today demands a lot of writing skills, including project writing skills, from graduates. As a result, teachers of business, technical, and academic writing need to revise how they teach project writing and technical and business writing to appeal to students in various disciplines, no matter the medium of instruction. The book, Teaching Business, Technical and Academic Writing Online and Onsite: A Writing Pedagogy Sourcebook encapsulates the various ways teachers and instructors of technical, business, and academic writing can incorporate techniques, methods, and frameworks into their classrooms to enhance students’ writing skills. The book is divided into two parts: part one, titled “Pedagogies, Instructional Principles, and Syllabus Design,” contains three chapters. Part two is titled “Facilitating Online Discussion, Incorporation of Digital Multimedia Assets, and Using Visual Tools” and consists of three chapters.

Part One, chapter one, “Superimposing R.E.A.L. Principles on the Project Writing Pyramid: A Paradigm Shift in Teaching Professional Writing,” addresses four principles of the project writing process that will enhance the teaching of professional writing, especially professional writing courses that prepare students for on-the-job writing. The four principles on which this chapter is built are referred to as R.E.A.L., where R is reader-oriented, E is extensively researched, A is actionable solution, and L is looped composition. The R.E.A.L. principles allow instructors and teachers of business, technical, and project writing to reexamine the ways these courses are taught and implement the idea of reader-centered writing. Students learn the need to understand their audience/readers by writing in their “language”—“introducing audience awareness during their ‘find’ process leads to students adopting and adapting their styles and content to audience tastes, requirements, and situations” (p. 12). Vengadasalam emphasizes incorporating audience/reader-centeredness, which helps students in their academic writing and, later in their roles as workplace writers (p. 13). Also, extensive research coupled with an actionable solution is another way teachers can get students involved in the project writing classroom to benefit them in the workplace. Extensive research not only helps them research for information to support their claims and assumptions but also come up with actionable solutions by identifying an appropriate framework that will best solve the problem. Professional writing instructors will also have to see it as a process where they are interested in all the steps of the project/report writing process. The shift in paradigm in teaching technical and professional writing courses is necessary because the R.E.A.L. principles used in the classroom will help students “conceptualize and write out proposals that move away from form-based approaches towards a more productive, rhetorical, process-based method” (p.19).

Chapter two, “Transformative Pedagogy and Students Voice: Using S.E.A. Principles in Teaching Academic Writing,” details a set of principles to bring out students’ voices in their writing. Students’ voices can be fostered by using scaffolding, empowerment, and awareness, which the author refers to as the S.E.A. principles. The author defines voice as “how each student contributes to scholarship” (p. 25). When students develop their voice, it distinguishes them from others; as a result, the voice becomes a significant part of their writing and identity. The author believes that transformative pedagogy is where the academic writing teacher “offers students opportunities and strategies to make their papers voiced, not just well cited” (p. 31). This involves the creation of an assignment prompt that desists from asking students to summarize text but employs “connective thinking, problem-solving and imaginative ideation” (p. 31). The scaffolding technique helps undergraduate and graduate students incorporate writing processes such as outlining, drafting, and revision. The instructor does so at both levels by using techniques that will draw students’ minds away from the underlying question of how to manifest their voices into the actual way of doing it. (p. 36). There is also the need to empower students, which lead students to ask intriguing questions, relate and connect to the assigned readings, and engage with them.

Chapter three is the last chapter of part one of the book. This chapter seeks to bring to light practices, principles, and ways that can be incorporated into writing across the curriculum, writing across disciplines, project writing, and writing for publication classes. The chapter outlines best practices instructors can emulate to help their students write for publication. Vengadasalam nicely organized the book so that the previous chapter served as a foundation; once students find their voice and who they are as writers, they can better approach writing for publication. Building on the idea that writing for publication can sometimes be an interdisciplinary course in certain instances, the author highlights that it is prudent for writing instructors to know the best ways to teach these courses to not only students in the humanities but also students in other research tracks. The idea is that students would find themselves in a workplace that demands that they collaboratively work or write with co-workers from various disciplines. Vengadasalam also outlines the “use of online peer review workshops” (p. 46). Online peer review gives students ample time to reflect on the feedback they will give to their colleagues. The author also details the concept of the modeling feedback triangle. In the case of modeling, students are asked to search for a list of journals they would like to publish in and look at the scope and requirements to develop a guide. This is to help students familiarize themselves with writing for journals. Feedback from peers online and instructors or research advisors helps students situate their ideas in academic writing. The author concludes the chapter by providing a sample syllabus of her “Writing for Publication” class, including assignment prompts and activities, course readings, and a very useful calendar for instructors who would want to emulate the authors’ way of teaching writing for publication courses.

In part two of the book, “Facilitating Online Discussion, Incorporation of Digital Multimedia Assets, and Using Visual Tools,” Vengadasalam focuses on how to use and import digital multimedia assets and visual tools in an online discussion setting. Chapter four discusses assessing online discussions in writing courses. The chapter offers pedagogical approaches from a learner-centered framework that sees the learner as the focal point of anything in the course. The chapter shares how teachers of online writing courses would have to adopt strategies different from the physical classroom to enhance the participation level of students. The author puts it, “the online teacher has to be able to break out of the hierarchal structure of the face-to-face classroom” (p. 64). The author highlights that in the traditional classroom, there is a unidirectional flow of information, while the online classroom has a multidirectional flow of information; information flows from the teacher to the students and between students themselves. Vengadasalam claims that students use more time participating in an online discussion as compared to face-to-face because they would have to take more time to draft their responses and take their time to reply to a colleague's response. This presupposes that teachers will have to give students enough time for online discussion to get great responses from students. The author emphasizes that teachers should also participate in these online discussions so the students will feel their presence. To achieve learner-centered courses, the author draws on DeNigris and Witchel's (2000) theory of W. R. I. T.E. (warm, responsive, inquisitive, tentative, and empathetic) and W.R.O.N.G. (wordy, repetitive, offensive, negative, and gossipy). Vengadasalam emphasizes the need for teachers to incorporate the theory of W.R.I.T.E. instead of W. R. O. N.G. This theory can be used based on Bloom's (1956) taxonomy scale, which will have discussion questions scaling up from knowledge of previous lessons learned in class, comprehension, application, analysis, and evaluation. These are all different levels, and the instructor needs to implement these, starting from “knowledge” to “evaluation,” being the last level. The author concludes this chapter with a sample online discussion topic that was structured according to DeNigris and Witchel's (2000) W.R.I.T.E. and Bloom's (1956) taxonomy scale. It also touches on the rubric: if teaching online writing courses is learner-centered, then making rubrics learner-centered would be the best way. The author offers sample grading rubrics for discussion, which will bring transparency and consistency.

Next, chapter five discusses open educational resources (O.E.R) and the importance of using them in business and technical writing classes. The author draws on Littlejohn et al. (2008) to characterize open educational resources. These include:

Digital assets (e.g., an image, video, or audio clip) are sometimes called “raw media asset.”

The final chapter, titled “Infographics in Academic and Professional Writing,” is fundamental now because of how useful infographics have become in the workplace. This chapter details the use of infographics in the project writing classroom. Words alone cannot convey the intended meaning of the message to the audience, so the inclusion of pictures, art, graphs, icons, and so on can help convey meaning. The author outlines practices in which infographics can be used to achieve the aim of conveying meaning. Vengadasalam points out that it is good for one to know the audience and not overwhelm or overload infographics with information. One of the principles unique to this author is the L.A.T.C.H. principle, which stands for Location, Alphabetical order, Timeline, Category, and Hierarchy. The principles allow students to arrange information or data based on how they were located or arrange information based on categories, hierarchical order, or the level of difficulty. This principle will help students organize their infographics in an orderly and readable manner. L.A.T.C.H will make the infographics persuasive and effective.

Overall, the book is a great source that brings out best practices for teaching project writing, business, and technical writing onsite and online. The author shared examples, scenarios, and sample teaching materials that will help teachers have a better understanding of the ideas presented. Vengadasalam's Teaching Business, Technical and Academic Writing Online and Onsite: A Writing Pedagogy Sourcebook is a very useful tool for technical and business writing instructors.