Using the technical and professional communication service course as the site for research, and student learning outcomes (SLOs) as the specific focus, we gathered, coded, and analyzed 503 SLOs from 93 institutions. Our results show the top outcomes are rhetoric, genre, writing, design, and collaboration. We discuss these outcomes and then we offer programmatic implications drawn from the data that encourage technical and professional communication program administrators and faculty to use common SLOs, to improve outcome development, and to reconsider the purpose of the service course for students.

We use a continuous improvement model to evaluate an information design assignment by analyzing 120 student drafts and finals alongside instructor feedback. Using data from across sections ( N = 118), we illustrate a process focused on improving student learning that other technical and professional communication program administrators and faculty can follow, while also offering insights into ways programs can assist a contingent labor force with improving pedagogical practice. This study provides insights into assignment design through data-driven evidence and reflective work that is necessary to help continuously improve a service course and to assist students in meeting learning outcomes.

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This paper develops a case study of the controversy surrounding release of genetically modified mosquitos in the Florida Keys to explore escalated conflicts between stakeholders who perceive themselves to be equally empowered and, therefore, justified in dominating public deliberations and policy decisions. The antagonistic discourse that characterizes the Keys controversy may be understood as a power struggle in which both the citizen-scientists and scientist-citizens wrestle for the same intellectual and jurisdictional turf. A description of this dynamic extends the discussion of asymmetrical institutional and social power relations to explicate the concept of "strategic irrationality" as a means of disrupting productive deliberations.