Service-learning in Technical and Professional Communication

Book excerpt: Grounded in the practices of ethical deliberation and civic action, this text creates a resource for helping technical and professional communication students and teachers implement service-learning projects in campus and larger communities. Designed for a wide-ranging audience, Service-Learning in Technical and Professional Communication address both advanced and beginning students and both veteran service-learning teachers and those trying it for the first time. The text begins with three chapters that define and explain the authors' approach to service-learning and develop a rhetorical toolbox for implementing this approach. The remainder of the book is loosely organized around the process of developing, executing, and evaluating service-learning projects. These "process" chapters teach rhetorical strategies, ethical concerns, genre conventions, and style principles in an integrated, contextualized way. Discussions of rhetoric and ethics are supplemented with heuristics for analyzing the larger cultural effects of service-learning projects.