Informational Reports
Conducting Research
Audience & Purpose
Job Materials
Technical Communication
100
A supervisor writes one of these to explain the company's new policy on recycling and describes informational sessions that the company will offer to help employees understand how to implement the policy.
What is a directive?
100
This kind of research involves creating information yourself.
What is primary research?
100
This sheet is a form that prompts you to consider various audience characteristics as you plan your document.
What is an audience profile sheet?
100
This short report summarizes a professional's education, positions, experience, skills, accomplishments, and hobby or personal life interests in a few paragraphs.
What is a professional bio?
100
This is defined as "the process of making and sharing information and ideas in the workplace" (verb) and as "a set of applications -- the documents you write" (noun).
What is "technical communication"?
200
An insurance adjuster writes one of these to present the results of his inspections of a building after a storm.
What is a field report?
200
This kind of research involves collecting information that other people have already discovered.
What is secondary research?
200
This audience consists of people close to the writer who use the document in carrying out their jobs.
What is the primary audience?
200
This activity is used to plan what you want to say about yourself as a professional; it often includes listing your strengths and weaknesses, subjects or tasks you enjoy, the kind of organization you want to work for, and personal workplace preferences (such as organizational culture, geographic location, etc.).
What is a self-inventory?
200
These include the writer of a document, the member of a project team, and an information resource for people inside and outside an organization.
What are the roles of a communicator?
300
A research team writes one of these to explain what the team has accomplished in the first half of the project, speculating on whether it will finish on time and on budget, and describes how it has responded to unexpected problems.
What is progress report?
300
This type of research media usually journals articles, trade journal articles, newspaper, and other documents that are published periodically.
What is a periodical?
300
This audience consists of people even further removed from the writer who might take an interest in the subject of the report.
What is the tertiary audience?
300
This is a collection of your best professional work or class projects related to the field that you will enter.
What is professional portfolio?
300
One measure of excellence that focuses on producing a document that conveys a single meaning the reader can easily understand.
What is document clarity?
400
A worker at a manufacturing company writes one of these after a toxic-chemical spill.
What is incident report?
400
This is a Web site that makes it easy for members of a community, company, or organization to create or edit content collaboratively. It is often criticized for its potential to be unreliable as a source in some forms.
What is a wiki?
400
These cultural variables are easily detectable and noticeable when interacting with others from another culture and would include aspects like political, social, economic factors.
What are "on the surface" variables?
400
In this type of resume, the writer uses time as the organizational pattern for each section.
What is a chronological resume?
400
Almost every technical document has six of these (it addresses particular readers; helps solve problems; reflects the organization's goals and culture; is produced collaboratively; uses design to increase readability and accessibility; and consists of words or images or both).
What are the major characteristics of a technical document?
500
A recording secretary writes one of these to document the official record of what occurred at a meeting of the management team or government agency.
What is a meeting minutes report?
500
This type of formal research includes establishing a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis, analyzing the data, and reporting the data.
What is an experiment?
500
This approach to creating a document for multiple readers will break up a document into components addressed to different readers.
What is a modular approach?
500
This is a brief phrase or sentence that states the applicant's goals or qualifications that show the reader "a fit" exists between the applicant and open position.
What is a statement of objectives?
500
One of the measures of excellence that focuses on being able to convey a lot of information economically; it emphasizes being useful to the busy reader.
What is conciseness?
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