Using qualitative methods to support situated writing: Protocol-assisted modeling

International audienceEthnographic and qualitative approaches have fundamentally altered the way we carry out writing research, allowing us to provide richer and denser explanations for situated writing. Such approaches can also be used effectively to teach situated writing. The current study describes how one qualitative method, protocol assisted modeling, has been used to adapt writing instruction to radically changing workplace conditions. In effect, the field of technical writing has undergone significant changes over the last 15 years. No longer is it sufficient to have "good writing skills" and produce clear manuals. Professionals must now design information by skillfully combining different symbiotic resources for each situation, audience, and context: textual, visual, special, audio, and code. What were essentially writing tasks have transformed into the full-scale management of a company's "information meta-products", adaptable to multiple audiences and situations. Protocol assisted modeling (PAM) has been used to help developing writers gain necessary skills. It comes from a technique adapted from industrial performance testing and devised to help writers revise their texts using think-aloud protocols (Hayes & Flower, 1983, Schriver, 1989, 1992). In the PAM approach, learners evaluate a series of problematic texts. After their initial evaluation, they are provided with think-aloud protocols from actual readers who encountered difficulties with the texts, so as to help them better think from the reader's point of view. The purpose of the approach is to help learners form deeper and more intuitive mental representations of the wide range of audiences they will need to be writing for. The current study compares results from two separate data sets: 15 graduate students in technical writing and information design (Dressen-Hammouda, 2018) and 34 final year undergraduates in information design. While the study reports on the use of this approach for teaching professional writing, it will be argued that protocol assisted modeling shows great promise for teaching scholarly writing