Project One
Content Analysis of Technical Writing
For this project, I was asked to select a subfield of Technical Communication. By choosing Content Development, I was placed in a team with other individuals to explore the profession. This project required us to analyze existing job postings and provide recommendations for students. Our team created an in-depth report that specializes in Content Development. The report’s primary audience are TECM majors who are interested in our subfield. These students are looking for recommendations that will help them become qualified and desirable applicants when applying to job postings. The recommendations provided in our Content Analysis Report includes:
skills and proficiencies that students will need to focus on, especially in their remaining coursework.
strategies for tailoring their own job materials (e.g., job letter, resume, portfolio, LinkedIn profile) to this subfield.
Skills and Tools
Skills used: Collaboration, Coding, Inter-Rater Reliability, Writing and Editing, Content Analysis
Tools Used: Microsoft Word and Excel
Report
By collecting multiple samples of job postings related to Content Development, we organized the postings with its associated metadata into a codebook. This will help students modify job materials and become desirable for hirers. We have constructed an outline of the methods used, findings, and results from the gathered data. The report is our analysis of the top skills and proficiencies that students need for the subfield.
Codebook
I merged my data sample with my team’s data samples and created a codebook for multiple content variables. Some of these variables were explored in Brumberger & Lauer’s codebook. We had to develop codes for additional and unexplored variables.
Metadata and Coding
We inventoried the job postings and associated each posting with metadata (e.g. job title, company name, location city and state, and number of words). The Excel spreadsheet includes raw codes and the coding used to assess the inter-rater reliability (IRR).