The instructions they wrote were part of an assignment Dr. Brasseur assigns each year to her Technical Writing students. “I feel that when students have an opportunity to help young people, they approach it enthusiastically,” said Dr. Brasseur. “The Expanding Your Horizons Conference gives the students a chance to write instructions that would be used by girls through Illinois who attend the conference.”

When the Technical Writing students began writing their instructions, they first studied how instructions should be written and designed for particular audiences. As a class, they talked about what topics the girls might be interested in and decided on a number of diverse topics. These included instructions about how to make webpages, how to use geometry to design a scrapbook page, how best to use a search engine, how to use an e-mail account, how to create a blog, how to use math to make rock candy, and a variety of other instructions.

Once the topics were chosen, Dr. Brasseur asked the students to research the websites of the Expanding Your Horizons conferences that are held throughout the country each year so they could learn more about the students. They then wrote drafts of the instructions and user-tested them with fellow students. Based on the feedback, they revised their instructions and submitted them for grading. After receiving Dr. Brassuer’s comments, the students had the opportunity to revise them once again for final use. Once at the conference site, the duplicated sets of instructions were placed on a display table at which a number of the student writers sat. The interest and enthusiasm of the girls provided a real world look at how important instruction written to specific audiences can be.

For more information about the Expanding Your Horizons Conference, please visit the national website: http://www.expandingyourhorizons.org/