Global Talk

Jeanette Thomas, treasurer of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG, reported on her experience at the STC Annual Conference in the July 2006 IDeaL newsletter.

Jeanette says: “Limiting myself to only four conference sessions a day was difficult, but the easiest one to select was “Cultural and International Perspectives on Adult Learning Activities” by Carolyn Luttrell and others.

“Every year, as our training audiences become more international, it becomes more important to ensure our materials are usable by diverse workforces. I’m passionate about finding new ways to work across cultures, but with so many variations across countries it is difficult to learn about and address every possibility.

“In this session, I expanded my cultural training perspectives to include training dynamics in China, the Middle East, and India. The presenters have been living and training in these regions and brought great insights and examples about how the various learning strategies, such as the Socratic method, would work –- or fail –- in these cultures. They emphasized the role of class and hierarchy in these cultures and the importance of saving face for many learners abroad. An open dialog broadened the discussion to handling conference calls and working with subject matter experts in these regions as well.”

The newsletter of the International Technical Communication SIG of STC is back online, after a hiatus since the end of 2005. Earlier issues are archived on our SIG website. (more…)

ITC SIG Manager Kit Brown and India chapter senior member Mak Pandit are co-chairs of the Global Membership Committee, reporting to the STC Board (Membership area lead by Jim Romano).

The Global Membership committee’s message to the members is: “Our profession touches every industry, every product, every process, every aspect of life in the world–a heady responsibility, which requires that we hold ourselves to high standards of excellence and continuous learning, and that we lead the way toward building rapport and communication channels with our colleagues wherever they may live and work. The Global Membership committee works with all the other committees, the Board, the staff, and the membership to build a foundation of processes, infrastructure, and multicultural understanding so that STC can effectively support and accommodate members regardless of their geography or culture.”

by Kit Brown, Associate Fellow, ITC SIG Manager

Greetings everyone! The annual conference is over, we’re planning for the next one, and lots of great stuff is happening! Here are the highlights:

PACESETTER AWARD: We won a Pacesetter award for our efforts in building the SIG!! Congratulations to all the volunteers who worked hard to make this happen!! Our certificate is posted on the home page of our website. (more…)

Please welcome our 33 new members who joined in July. The ITC SIG now has 1138 members; STC has 14686 members.

This list was updated March 12, 2005. If you have more up to date information please write to the editors. (more…)

Please welcome our 65 new members who joined in June and our 61 new members who joined in May. As of June 30, the International Technical Communication SIG had 1108 members. This will be the official size of the SIG for the 2006 to 2007 STC year. In comparison, on June 30, 2005 the ITC SIG had 987 members. As of June 30, 2006 there were 14,463 members in STC.