After reading the articles for this week, I don’t think we can argue with the skills learned through the incorporation of visual communication into technical and professional writing curricula.  In their article entitled “Visuospatial Thinking in the Professional Writing Classroom,” Claire Lauer and Christopher A. Sanchez directly identify these benefits:

Based on our qualitative analysis, these components should especially focus on helping students (a) translate verbal information into specific visual details that work persuasively, (b) recognize and use the multifaceted capacity of images (rather than assume that an image represents only a single and specific verbal message), (c) frame and arrange elements more deliberately within the space of a page, (d) integrate and layer words and visuals to develop depth and complexity, (e) establish a hierarchy, and (f) direct white space, not simply to make the design more aesthetically pleasing but to focus attention and support arguments. (207)

I also don’t think we can argue with how those particular skills learned through visual thinking translate into the demands of today’s technical and professional writers.  Brumberger explains, “Technology has brought rapid change to the field of professional communication, recasting the writer in a role that requires aptitude in a number of domains.  The field has recognized that visual communication is among the most important of these domains, particularly because it transcends the border between print and digital text and is therefore central to the notion of multiliteracies” (397).

While I absolutely see the benefit of technical professional and technical writing as a strategic relationship between verbal and visual communication, I’m not sure how practical it would be to expect technical writing teachers to teach their students theories and applications of both verbal and visual communications in one semester.  I think it would be more practical for our students to learn the basic theories of visual communication (the principles of design, visual literacy, a vocabulary of the visual, etc) in another class just as they learn the basic theories of verbal communication in other classes (English 101, English 102, etc).  That way,  their technical or professional writing course could become the place in which they purposefully apply those theories of verbal and visual communication.

Lauer and Sanchez hint at this idea when they explain, “And most business communication (and related) programs have not historically required a course in visual communication or even recommended it as an elective.  This represents a fundamental disconnect between the focus of instruction and the demands of the workplace” (186).  They also explain how students in technical/professional writing courses have extremely varying visuospatial abilities and exposure to visual thinking; they note that technical writing instructors may find it difficult to accommodate for those differences.  Requiring our students to take a course on the principles of visual communication in addition to their already required technical or professional writing course would allow the students to go into the technical writing course with some background knowledge on visual thinking; technical writing teachers wouldn’t have to rely solely on “the inherent capacities that each learner brings to the learning arena” (187).  Then, the technical writing instructor could move beyond simply teaching visual thinking to the practical application of that means of communication in the technical and professional writing field.

*Interestingly enough, WVU does offer an undergraduate course on visual communication through the School of Journalism.  The course, Visual Journalism 210, focuses on several aspects of visual thinking: “Theory and principles of visual communication and image culture. Visual literacy, critical thinking, and ethics by visual journalists in digital media.  Software applications for photography, graphic design, video and web publishing.”  Would it benefit technical writing students to take a course like this before taking technical writing so that the technical writing curriculum could build upon these ideas of visual communication?

 Works Cited

Brumberger, E. R. (2007). “Making the strange familiar: A pedagogical exploration of visual thinking.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 21(4), 376–401.

Lauer, C. & Sanchez, C. A. (2011). “Visuospatial Thinking in the Professional Writing Classroom.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 25(2), 184–218.