An Investigation of the Associations Among Professional Tasks, Document Genres and Document Assessments in the Context of University Teaching

Abstract

This study investigated the following three associations in the university teaching context: (1) between genres of the documents faculty used to support their teaching and the tasks they performed to use these genres; (2) between these genres and the criteria they employed to assess these genres; and (3) between their tasks and criteria. The author first employed qualitative citation analysis to identify the genres faculty used based on citations in their teaching materials (e.g., syllabi and lecture slides). Semi-structured interviews were then implemented to explore how they assessed and used different genres. A total number of 27 faculty from different disciplines contributed 28 courses. Qualitative content analysis was employed to analyze interview transcripts. The results indicate the criteria faculty employed served as function enablers that bridged genres and tasks. The tasks they performed served as the inclusion and exclusion criteria that determined what genres were used or not. Tasks determined the information characteristics of genres that mattered in faculty’s task performance.

Keywords

• document genres
• genre repertoires
• task analysis
• information use
• document assessments