Re: Advice Sought: supervising an extreme novice

[Ginger Moskowitz <ginger -at- AATECH -dot- COM>]

Since this student is only with you for the summer, you might do better
using her as your assistant than trying to make her into a tech writer. Does
she have to work on the new product, or can you use her for
editing/compiling/proofreading/etc. on existing documentation? If she takes
some of this workload off you, then you can start documenting the new
product, and give her the edits/texts to type out electronically.

If this person was going to be a permanent employee (ugh), I'd spend time
training them and working on their writing skills. But in this case, is it
really worth the time?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michele Marques [SMTP:mmarques -at- USA -dot- NET]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 25, 1999 5:51 PM
> To:   TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject:      Advice Sought: supervising an extreme novice
>
> Although I have supervised people before, I have never supervised a techn=
> ical
> writer, and am looking for advice (other than "don't do it") for supervis=
> ing
> an extreme novice.
>
> Background: I am a lone tech. writer who normally would not have the
>   resources to work on the project in question for at least month. A
>   university student (who is not studying to be a tech. writer or other
>   writer) is working this summer in my company as a general assistant.
>
>   Someone had the idea that I should supervise the student in writing
>   WinHelp (possibly HTMLHelp) files for a new product.
>
> Does anyone have any advice for supervising this student? I am throwing h=
> er at
> the mercy of the programmer to learn about the product itself. I have For=
> eHelp
> Premiere and will be assigning her to work through the tutorial (to learn=
>
> about the basics of building help files or even what goes into help files=
> ).  =
>
>
> Please let me know if you have any other suggestions. =
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>      - Michele
>        mmarques -at- usa -dot- net
>  =
>
>
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