What I remember from and what changed through the MA programme

After nearly two years of studying the Technical Communication and E-Learning MA programme, the end is near. Although not close. There are still five months to go, and I will write my dissertation during that time. However, the current semester is about to terminate, and I will submit my last assignments for this programme within the next days and weeks.

Navigating our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), listening to our last lecture podcasts, checking the last assignment briefs—again and again, as always—puts me in farewell mood.

Also, questions arise. Questions such as—what exactly did I learn during the last two years?

I certainly learned a lot. But—could I summarise it, is there any “essence” of learning outcomes? What is there to know about technical communication and e-learning, what should one know? And what can I do now that I could not do before?

There probably is no quick and easy answer to those questions. What is more, sometimes, I would feel as if I could not remember a thing about the programme. But this is not true. Here are a few learning experiences that come to mind right now and that would answer those questions to a certain extend.

• Native or not

  First semester, first writing assignments. The summary, for example. The moment when I realised that not only my newly acquired knowledge (for instance, when describing theories, etc.) would be graded. But that my actual writing will be graded. It did not occur to me before.

  And suddenly I felt like I had a handicap for not being a native English speaker. It even felt unfair to be graded in comparison to those with the privilege of having English as a mother tongue. Of course, this was somehow stupid as readers of English documentation would never ask about the writer being native speaker or not. Reader would just want to have usable and efficient documentation.

  Through the programme, I wrote a lot, and I got feedback on my writing. Certainly, I do not consider anymore that being a non-native speaker would be a handicap.

  Plus, I have a lot of practice by now. I have exercised my writing muscles, and I am motivated to keep exercising. I did like what we learned from a company presentation ultimately. They also publish their documents with an English-first approach. That is why they have native English speakers as mentors for other writers. Each native speaker would mentor two non-native English speakers who would send them their texts for editorial review before the texts get published.

• Learning types

  This “Aha!” moment after the e-tivity that made us test ourselves for our learning type. This lightbulb moment that we all are different learners.

  I somehow “knew” it before, but I never applied it to my technical writing. I wrote for people like me previously. Now, I try to always cater to more than one learning type.

  This insight inspired me. Currently, I play with the idea of delivering regular (company-internal) blog posts (about 3-4 per year, as I would not get paid for it) where each one is offered as a written text as well as a conversational podcast, and (where applicable) even as a drawing or infographic. Same content, multiple media formats. I would love to do that.

• Using XML

  How the XML assignment made me understand XSLT.

  I never got training for that at work although I should have. That is why I was particularly interested in the topic and also why I came to decide to deliver my XML assignment not only in XML+CSS but in XML+XSLT+CSS.

  In doing so, I felt as if now I really understood the power of extracting data from XML according to your current document’s needs. I am glad I had this moment.

  Although I learned later that XML—while still widely used—also has its disadvantages because of the use of tags. Through a Udemy course by Peter Gruenbaum, I also looked into JSON compared to XML as both are languages to structure data.

  Fun fact: I only learned about this Udemy course through my interview partner from the interview assignment. She told me that everybody who started working at the company without XML or API documentation knowledge would need to take the Peter Gruenbaum courses at Udemy. I took them, too, and can highly recommend them.

• In general

  I enjoyed the fact that peer collaboration and exchange was fostered by the design of the programme. One key criterion why I opted in for this programme was exactly that: the promise of not being alone but being in close contact to peers and—even better—to peers from both the on-campus as well as the distance learner group.

  It also really helped to be encouraged and able to actually meet everybody at the start of the programme and at least once in between (research workshop). This “having been there”, on location, made me feel “connected” to the group and to the place, that is, to the university, the city, and even to the country. Everything I do for the programme is based upon and motivated through this notion of “belonging”.

For a more professional list, I could always skim through the course material to get familiar again with theories or concepts. I might do this in the future to broaden the topics covered in our technical communication team’s company-internal blog.

What I observed recently is that I still act “intuitively” at work. While working my way through complex subject matter, I do not reflect too much on technical communication topics as such. I just apply what I know; my knowledge is my toolkit.

So, this did not change. I recall that this was the same before having been on the MA programme. Working intuitively—that is, paying more attention to getting the subject matter right instead of wrapping my head around technical communication issues—might either be my personal working style or it may be just “normal” for a lot of technical writers. Especially if time-pressure comes into play.

What did change, though, is the quality of my “intuition” or knowledge. The technical writing decisions I make now are based on broader and deeper insights than those I had taken before I was on the programme. I sometimes come across old documents of mine and note that I am “somewhere else” now, more advanced.

So, during the programme, I definitely enhanced my technical communication knowledge, my toolkit. To keep moving forward, I will have to pay attention to my tools in the future as well. I will have to keep sharpening them through Continuing Professional Development (CPD). For a start, I became a student member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). I still have to figure out how to get the most out of it, but it’s a start, and I am looking forward to constantly developing my toolkit.