Christine, You are over-complicating things. Yes, I know that comprehension is only one part of the chain of things that leads to practical knowledge. But it is an important part. Let's concentrate on that first and worry about application later. (Application is irrelevant if comprehension doesn't exist.) So, again, what do we do, as a profession, to assess the comprehension rating of one medium over another? To say that one medium "has the ability to do the job in a range of real or simulated situations" doesn't give us much to go on. (How well does it do the job relative to other media?) I mentioned in a post that comprehension is often measured by asking readers questions about text they are asked to read. Has anyone done such studies to compare, say, online tutorials with paper procedures or with traditional online help? Has anyone tested the comprehension rating of wiki-delivered material versus other media? And so on and so on. The more general question is this: if comprehension ratings are important, as I'm suggesting they are, are we giving them sufficient attention? Cheers Geoffrey Marnell Principal Consultant Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd T: +61 3 9596 3456 F: +61 3 9596 3625 W: <http://www.abelard.com.au> www.abelard.com.au _____ From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Christine Kent Sent: Monday, March 09, 2009 2:49 PM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: The next question. [Moving on from "Should we always give users what they ask for?"] Simple - the ability to do the job in a range of real or simulated situations. "Comprehension" as a word relates only to intellectual awareness. It is only part of any learning story. Can the person who comprehends DO anything in a given situation as a result of that comprehension? Further, can they extrapolate and apply the "comprehension" across a range of new situations. Use it or lose it. Christine From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Marnell Sent: Monday, 9 March 2009 2:38 PM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: The next question. [Moving on from "Should we always give users what they ask for?"] Hi austechies, Peter Martin, Michael Lewis and Rhonda Bracey have offered good reasons why we might want to, or need to, opt for paper over online delivery of documentation. There are many others I could add to the mix (including that for some types of documentation, online delivery is illogical-take computer disaster recovery procedures, for instance-and that for some products we write about, there is simply no practical interface for online delivery). But I didn't particularly want to introduce these other reasons. They would have, and have, splintered the debate into something else: a debate about paper versus online. I am much more interested in a more fundamental question, which I was hoping my initial posting would have answered: Do technical writers agree that the comprehension rating of a delivery medium should be a factor in deciding whether that medium should be adopted? And then, if I got a postive answer to that question, I was going to ask what techncial writers are doing to assess the comprehension ratings of a delivery media they choose (since without some rigorous assessment of that sort, might it not be that we are giving our users less than optimal documentation). So, now that we've had such a lively debate over the first issue, let's have some lively debate over this new issue: what do you do to assess the comprehension rating of the media you choose (or what should we do)? Cheers Geoffrey Marnell Principal Consultant Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd T: +61 3 9596 3456 F: +61 3 9596 3625 W: <http://www.abelard.com.au> www.abelard.com.au