Organizational Processes: a Study of 14 Technical Writing Students

Abstract

This thesis presents the results of a study of theorganitional processes of fourteen technical writing students. The students were enrolled in two of my classes at Marshalltown Community College in Marshalltown, Iowa, in the spring semester of 1985. The students participated in experiments in which they reorganized scrambled writing while thinking aloud into a tape recorder. Using one class as an experimental group, the other a control group, I conducted minilectures on organization to the experimental group between pretest and posttest experiments. One of the results of my study was that the experimental group improved their performance in the posttest. Furthermore, by studying the transcripts of the students' tapes, I was able to piece together the strategies the students used in organizing. The transcripts gave me the opportunity to examine the process of organizing, rather than just the product.