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RE: suggestions needed for teaching a introductory college course in technical writing
Subject:RE: suggestions needed for teaching a introductory college course in technical writing From:bryan -dot- westbrook -at- amd -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Mon, 21 May 2001 10:20:02 -0500
*Interviewing techniques. One of the most useful classes I had to take as
an undergrad was a news writing class taught by the journalism department.
*Audience analysis.
*Make sure that they know how to learn unfamiliar material quickly. That's
one of the key skills of this field, and the one that no class ever seems to
cover. I would suggest avoiding the usual write a manual about something
you know assignment and force the students to learn something new and
document that. Perhaps you could work out something with the CIS department
to match writing students with programming students (or with engineering
students for hardware) for a joint project.
*Some sort of raster graphics program: PhotoShop, PaintShop Pro, or
something of that genre. I've actually met graduate students who pasted
screen captures directly into Word and edit them with Word's drawing
features because they didn't want to learn how to use a graphics app.
*HTML. Actual hand-coding and not some WYSIWYH editor. They can easily
learn to use one of the latter on their own, but without a solid HTML
foundation they will probably end up making a mess of it. A grounding in
HTML will also be a good basis for understanding SGML, XML, and all the
other ML's out there.
*Make sure they know how to read engineering drawings (schematics, assembly
drawings, etc.). I know it's a pretty basic skill, but I know someone who
says she blew a job interview once because she told the interviewer that she
couldn't read blueprints.
*Kenneth Burke and Michel Foucalt. (Just kidding about that one. ;-> )
-----Original Message-----
From: SpiiGIRL -at- aol -dot- com [mailto:SpiiGIRL -at- aol -dot- com]
Sent: Sunday, May 20, 2001 3:27 PM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: sugestions needed for teaching a introductory college course in
technical writin
I am teaching a introductory college course in technical writing and need
some suggestions of what to incorporate into the course work. What type of
technical writing skills are needed specifically in the workforce? What
technical areas do you see people you work with or supervise lack?
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