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Showing posts from September, 2025

Research Gap

 After compiling together my sources and writing a literature review with them, I have identified a Research Gap in perspectives. Any source I could find that talked about templates usually had done research in the context of education. They discussed how templates could be used in teaching future technical writers. The few that I found taking place in the professional workplace weren't directly about template usage.  I wrote in my literature review specifically that, " It would benefit the technical writing community greatly if more research were done specifically on the use of technical templates within the workforce and how the use of technical templates affects a writer’s ability to think critically over time." I also added in that research like this could be applied by formulating, " guidelines on when it is appropriate to use templates and how to use them ethically to limit the shrinkage in critical thinking for writers everywhere while still capitalizing on th...

Tentative Sources

 I unfortunately right now only have two tentative sources, but it's better than none! I plan to do more research this week and add to the list as I begin to also annotate. On the bright side, I have confirmed my topic idea. I want to research the role of technical document templates and how they measure up to original "from scratch" work. For instance, I would like to see if companies prefer a memo created from a template or "from scratch" more. I'm excited to see what this research brings up. https://research.ebsco.com/c/5pbjd6/viewer/html/b6u4xqdozj https://research.ebsco.com/c/5pbjd6/viewer/pdf/eovecubzjb

Topic Interests

 I am excited to pick a topic to begin researching during this course. My hope is that through this course I will gain a newfound confidence when it comes to researching for projects in school, the workforce, and beyond. I have a few ideas on what I may want to research but I don't know if I've landed on any specific topic yet. Of course, an easy idea would be to research the effects of AI on the field of technical writing; however I feel that the topic is a little too current. I also think it would be interesting to research the correlation between students earning undergraduate degrees in technical writing and their job outlook in the field after graduation. I just don't know if either of these topic will actually have enough info to fulfill a full research project.