Rate My Professor Jonathan Arnett

E. Jonathan Arnett, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication at Kennesaw State University, where he serves as Coordinator of the B.S. in Technical Communication program. He holds a doctorate in Technical Communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University. Arnett previously worked at Southern Polytechnic State University prior to its merger with Kennesaw State University in 2015, teaching courses in both the Professional Writing and Technical Communication programs. His career at Kennesaw State University includes instruction in technical communication, professional writing, and related areas, with office hours available in EB 284.

Arnett's research interests center on technical communication pedagogy and the intersection of technical communication with open educational resources. Since 2017, he has presented research on OER development and student usage patterns at seven international conferences, three national conferences, two statewide conferences, and one webinar. He co-authored a $30,000 grant from Affordable Learning Georgia to develop Open Technical Communication, an OER textbook serving as the primary resource for TCOM 2010 courses at Kennesaw State University, along with its follow-up report; a subsequent $25,800 Scaling Up grant was under review. Additionally, he secured a $3,000 funded contract with the Cobb and Douglas Public Health Department from April 2016 to June 2017. Key publications include co-authorship of Open Technical Communication, 3rd ed. (2019, Kennesaw State University, with T. Reardon, T.M. Powell, M.C. Logan, C. Rice, D. McMurrey); If You Build It, Will They Come?: Research into Students’ Use of an Open Educational Resource in Technical Communication (2018, IEEE International Professional Communication Conference); Learning Information Literacy Across the Curriculum (LILAC) and Its Impacts on Student Digital Literacies and Learning Across the Humanities (2017, IEEE, with J.L. Bohannon, E. Greer); single-authored chapters Technical Definitions and Descriptions and Technical Editing, plus six co-authored chapters in Open Technical Communication (2019); Entrepreneurial Acts in the Academy: Disrupting the Textbook Model to Create an Open, Digitally-Delivered Technical Communication Text (2016, with L.A. Palmer, T. Powell); and Distortion and the Politics of Pain Relief: A Habermasian Analysis of Medicine in the Media (2008, with A. Koerber, T. Cumbie). His contributions have advanced OER adoption in technical communication education.