Event Information
Streaming Session
Recorded SessionWelcome and Hook (5 minutes)
Content: Introduce session goals. Present a confusing set of directions for participants to follow on their phones (intentionally vague, jargony, or incomplete).
Engagement: Participants attempt to follow directions and experience the frustration of unclear documentation.
Process: Device-based activity, followed by a whole-group debrief: What was frustrating? How would this affect a teacher under time pressure?
Plain Language Principles (10 minutes)
Content: Present plain language principles, including concise wording, active voice, scannable formatting, and clear headings/links. Use before/after examples to illustrate each principle.
Engagement: Quick rewrite challenge: Participants improve a confusing sentence independently or with nearby colleagues.
Process: Peer-to-peer interaction, followed by immediate volunteer(s) sharing examples for whole-group discussion.
Collaborative Writing Strategies (12 minutes)
Content: Present collaborative writing strategies, including role-setting, feedback loops, and style guide alignment. Show examples of inconsistent documentation, including mismatched terminology, mixed formatting, and varied tone, and explain how strategies prevent these issues.
Engagement: Participants complete a quick activity to spot the inconsistencies in a paragraph independently or with nearby colleagues.
Process: Peer-to-peer interaction, followed by immediate volunteer(s) sharing findings and a whole-group debrief: How would a style guide or agreed process prevent this?
Hands-On Rewrite Lab (18 minutes)
Content: Provide a messy sample support document with jargon, missing steps, and inconsistent formatting. Participants use the clarity checklist to diagnose issues and rewrite the text in plain, consistent language.
Engagement: Participants complete the rewrite activity independently or with nearby colleagues.
Process: Peer-to-peer collaboration during work time, followed by a facilitator-led live demo of revision, using a think-aloud to explain the decision-making process.
Practical Tools for Sustainability (10 minutes)
Content: Present three practical tools: documentation template, clarity checklist, and style guide starter. Discuss how each can be adapted for branding guidelines, iterative reviews, and school/district contexts.
Engagement: Provide QR code and link to resources and open floor to participant questions on tools and strategies.
Process: Whole-group Q&A discussion.
Wrap-Up (5 minutes)
Content: Summarize key takeaways. Frame documentation as “quiet infrastructure” that supports innovation and success.
Engagement: Call to action with an actionable first step for improving existing documentation.
Process: Individual reflection, group closure, and resource reminders.
After this session, participants will be able to…
Apply plain language strategies, such as concise wording, active voice, and scannable formatting, to make support documentation easier to read and understand.
Use collaborative writing strategies, including role-setting, feedback loops, and style guide alignment, to create consistent documentation.
Implement practical tools, like documentation templates, clarity checklists, and style guides, to maintain documentation that is clear, accessible, and sustainable.
Pongpech, A. W. (2024, July 14). The importance of building and maintaining a technical documentation culture. Medium. https://medium.com/@alexpongpech/the-importance-of-building-and-maintaining-a-technical-documentation-culture-cd589b8fc6f2
Benefits of a strong documentation culture in any workplace include “knowledge retention and transfer, improved collaboration and communication, increased efficiency and productivity, enhanced product quality, and compliance and risk management."
United Kingdom Home Office. (2024, November 6). Write effective documentation. Home Office Engineering Guidance and Standards. https://engineering.homeoffice.gov.uk/patterns/write-effective-documentation/
Strong documentation is critical in every field, as documentation done well enables users to "become experts at using a product on their own, reducing the amount of time and money spent on troubleshooting, and improving productivity."
Deranek, H. (2023, October 23). How to write technical documentation that people will actually read and use. Medium. https://medium.com/slalom-build/how-to-write-documentation-that-people-will-actually-read-and-use-b26791fc1429
The goal of strong documentation is to guide the reader and anticipate their needs and questions; furthermore, "as the complexity of your product increases, the quality of your documentation becomes more critical." Two specific actionable strategies for creating strong documentation are using modular documentation that can be linked and reused as needed and implementing a strong review process.
Bhattacharya, D. (2024, February 13). Creating effective technical documentation. MDN Blog. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/blog/technical-writing/
Strong technical documentation employs the "three Cs": clarity, conciseness, and consistency. Specific actionable strategies for creating strong documentation include plain language, active voice, limiting sentences to 15-20 words, and using the same terms and formatting throughout. It should be well-organized, reviewed and proofread, and digitally accessible.
United States General Services Administration. (n.d.). Checklist for plain language. PlainLanguage.gov. https://www.plainlanguage.gov/resources/checklists/checklist/
Although schools are not directly targeted by the U.S. 2010 Plain Writing Act, all federal agencies are because it's just good practice. The U.S. Department of Education does have a Plain Writing Initiative encouraging the use of plain language guidelines. This checklist gives actionable information and additional details for these guidelines.
Bendici, R. (2021, December 21). How to write in plain language for teaching. Tech & Learning. https://www.techlearning.com/how-to/how-to-write-in-plain-language-for-teaching
Strong documentation is especially important for schools, both internally and externally, as it makes translation to other languages simpler and more effective. It also makes online searches easier, ensuring stakeholders can access information when they need it.
Matveeva, N., Moosally, M., & Willerton, R. (2017). Plain language in the twenty-first century: Introduction to the special issue on plain language. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 60(4), 336-342. https://doi.org/10.1109/TPC.2017.2759619
Beyond requirement and best practice, using plain language in documentation is an ethical responsibility, as documentation provides a service that all users should be able to access: "The overall goal is to ensure that most, if not all, users will understand information... The plain-language approach is a synergy of a communicator's ethical responsibility and rhetorical skills used in the best interests of the intended audience." Moreover, it is both preferred by readers and aids in reading comprehension.
Kramer, L. (2023, February 15). How to write collaboratively. Grammarly Blog. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/writing-tips/how-to-write-collaboratively/
The nature of schools and the workplace in general in the twenty-first century means that much of documentation is completed collaboratively, meaning there must be a balance of consistency and collaboration. There are five core strategies to "make collaborative writing easy and productive": Determine who is responsible for what, how collaborators will communicate, what tentative deadlines will be in place, how feedback will be provided and received (both logistically and personally), and what essential goal is central to the project.
Last, S., Neveu, C., Pattison, K., Hagstrom-Schmidt, N., & McKinney, M. (2022). Collaborative writing processes. In McKinney, M., Pattison, K., LeMire, S., Anders, K., & Hagstrom-Schmidt, N. (Eds.), Howdy or hello? Technical and professional communication (2nd ed.). The Texas A&M University Libraries Open Digital Publishing. https://doi.org/10.21423/odp.wonf45
Often, collaborative writing can impede the goals of strong technical documentation, reducing cohesion and consistency of documents, so "to create a coherent document written in one voice, teams must plan carefully and revise thoughtfully." Choosing strategies based on team needs, timelines, volume of writing output, and project goals is imperative.
Lingard, L. (2021). Collaborative writing: Strategies and activities for writing productively together. Perspectives on Medical Education, 10(3), 163-166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-021-00668-7
There are specific, research-based, actionable strategies teams can use for effective collaboration to produce strong documentation, and they start with five key questions: "What strategies does our team employ? Are our strategies purposeful, selected according to the nature of the team and the needs of the project, or are they accidental? Do we explicitly discuss how we will coordinate the work, or do we tacitly enact the same strategy each time? Are we using each strategy in ways that maximize its affordances and minimize its challenges? Are we using technology appropriately to support our collaborative activities?" Strategies can be used in all seven stages of the writing process, including brainstorming, conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, reviewing, revising, and editing, ensuring a strong and effective final product.
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