Johndan Johnson-Eilola

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor at Clarkson University

The authors analyze the ability of ChatGPT to generate effective instructions for a consequential task: taking a COVID-19 test. They compare the output from a commercial prompt for generating these instructions to those provided by the test manufacturer. They also analyze the input, the prompt itself, to address prompt-engineering issues. The resul...

This article offers a theoretical intervention into the work on posthumanism in technical and professional communication (TPC), an intervention that encourages the field to recognize relationships between objects and users in different ways. Our intervention draws on the work of Deleuze and Guattari to reimagine how TPC tends to think about the con...

The COVID-19 pandemic created major disruptions in technical communication classrooms everywhere. Although technical communication instructors are used to teaching in a variety of contexts and settings, adopting a flexible approach in the first place will allow them to be better prepared for the changing dynamics of an unpredictable world. The auth...

Overall, the chapters in "Solving Problems in Technical Communication" provide an accessible introduction to major topics in the theory and practice of technical communication. The texts' focus on the context of communicators makes the book appropriate for technical communication majors at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Instructors of techn...

Although students work and live in a remix culture, composition pedagogy does not always value the discursive practices of that culture, especially when it comes to producing written work for academic contexts. The reasons for these views are historically determined and tied, at least in part, to relatively traditional notions of authorship and cre...

As new media mature, the changes they bring to writing in college are many and suggest implications not only for the tools of writing, but also for the contexts, personae, and conventions of writing. An especially visible change has been the increase of visual elements-from typographic flexibility to the easy use and manipulation of color and image...

Early work in and about hypertext suggested dramatic potentials for the medium, primarily in the way it challenged notions of authorial control, linearity, and the status quo in general. This history of hypertext tended to portray contradicting archetypes or pure forms that concrete developments never fulfilled. We argue that hypertext has long bee...

In this paper, I will provide a basic overview of issues related to the use of open source models for development and distribution of computer documentation. The first section of the paper defines the key relations among different "open" categories (ranging from open standards to free software). The second section of the paper argues for two differ...

This presentation traces the locations and roles of computer documentation over the latter half of the twentieth-century in order to construct a model of information/knowledge space as it relates to different forms of work. The paper then provides suggestions about future forms of documentation and interface based on ethnographic research of worker...

This paper questions the ubiquitous practice of supplying minimalist information to users, of making that information functional only, of assuming that the Shannon-Weaver communication model should govern online systems, and of ignoring the social implications of such a stance. Help systems that provide fast, temporary solutions without providing a...

Johnson-Eilola responds to commentaries by noting that all ask, in different ways, the same question he is asking: How far can and should we go in supplying greater context and complexity to software users?

Graduate education in technical communication should provide students with an expansive view of the field. Toward that end, we offer a three-dimensional framework that represents technical communication as a robust, diverse, complex whole. Although the framework aims towards coherence, it embraces contradiction. That is, the framework represents a...

The vast majority of people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in textcentered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we create and refer to the appointments and notes in our personal digital assistants, we use texts. Texts, as already a technology in themselves,...

Most people who use information technology (IT) every day use IT in text-centered interactions. In e-mail, we compose and read texts. On the Web, we read (and often compose) texts. And when we create and refer to the appointments and notes in our personal digital assistants, we use texts. Texts are deeply embedded in cultural, cognitive, and materi...

Arguing that the discourses in which we write also write us, this essay examines some language-related regulating mechanisms that function in online forums supported by wide-area networks (WANs). In particular, it examines one online forum conventionally defined as open, the LISTSERV discussion list TECHWR-L, and considers some positionings and res...

This article analyzes the location of "value" in technical communication contexts, arguing that current models of technical communication embrace an outdated, self-deprecating, industrial approach subordinating information to concrete technological products. By rethinking technical communication in terms of Reich's "symbolic-analytic work," technic...

nd abilities, their short- and long-term goals, and the environments in which they work. This developmental framework carefully considers two important areas: the rhetorical issues of users, goals, and time/space frames, and the formal characteristics of tutorials, documentation, and help. Online support systems of any type must help users achieve...

Defines and critiques three cultural models for structuring and using information: accumulation, circulation and association. In these “economies”, information is something to be hoarded (as accumulation), moved (circulation) or connected to other pieces of information (association). By examining the ways information acts like financial economies o...

Academic theory about hypertext indicates that hypertext use makes concrete postmodern and post-structuralist theories of text. When it is said that hypertext offers a new type of freedom and power for readers and writers, what are some of the things that are signaled implicitly? In conservative hypertexts, "choice" means being able to choose among...

The Electronic Documentation System, was developed to provide fast, easy, online information retrieval, meeting a specific need for engineering industries. It addresses the requirements of both the user and the author of electronic documentation and ...

Argues that technology necessitates that composition instructors gain the ability to shift perspectives and to look at the use of technology in composition instruction from as many disciplines as possible. Discusses some aspects of what it means to read and write in hypertext in two (normally mutually exclusive) perspectives: technology criticism a...