It's not quite the 4th of July, but I'm trying to channel the future and predict which books will work best for my fall classes. As usual, I have two new preps - in this case, one course I've never even taken, and one course that I took when I was a student, but haven't taught. And lest I be ambiguous, I am also teaching a third course - an oldie but goodie, the basic tech writing service course.
Textbook selection gets harder every time. I'd dispense with it, but I learned last summer the perils of teaching classes without textbooks. It's easy to take for granted the usefulness of a textbook, and most of us probably underuse them, but not having one pretty much sucked. I won't make that mistake again, although it gets made for me whenever the bookstores can't get books, order too few, etc. I'm looking for a book or books for teaching an undergraduate course in visual technical communication. I used Kostelnick and Hassett's fabulous book, Shaping Information in a graduate level course last Spring, and they didn't seem to love it, so I'm not sure how it will go over with undergraduates. Karen Schriver's encyclopedic Dynanamics in Document Design is probably too much a summary of theory and research, not enough case study, but maybe I'll look into it - it's so rich you can use it for years and still learn new things. I was thinking about more a focused case study like Mitchell's The Last Dinosaur Book, but then we're getting more into pop culture than technical visuals, if that matters... I'll watch the discussion boards and skim the relevant blogs. I'm sure I'll find something. And I've only missed this deadline by - what? two months? So much for setting a good example!
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