Engaging Public Administrators in Training: Technical Communication as a Responsive Rhetorical Art

How might technical communicators assist students training to become public administrators to develop the capacity to listen to those with firsthand knowledge of the policies they put in place or oversee to serve adult refugees? Serious games such as those that Games for Change hosts on Facebook offer one ready scheme, presenting players with realistic scenarios in which underserved women characters leverage available resources in pursuit of basic health care and education. But digital media experts warn that too often the very grammar of such games tacitly reinforce damaging attitudes and practices that students may unknowingly transfer from the classroom to the workplace. This paper presents findings from a data-visualization study designed to fill this gap. Responsive to current conditions in Phoenix but adaptive to other locales, the prototypes featured here were designed to support active "intercultural knowledge building" among policy makers, refugees and other immigrants in Phoenix resettling under conditions not of their making, and those serving in a variety of capacities as literacy sponsors for these residents.