Technical Writing

Course Goals 
This course aims at preparing you to be effective communicators—particularly, effective writers—in your future professional careers. It helps you to develop workplace writing skills and to understand—and ultimately to apply—the rhetorical principles guiding and underlying workplace writing practices. During the semester, this course will introduce you to the basic issues, elements, and genres of technical writing, including

• writing for various audiences for various purposes
• addressing social issues related to writing, such as ethics, politics, gender, culture, etc.
• defining and analyzing workplace writing problems
• conducting research for writing
• writing collaboratively
• developing an effective professional tone and style
• incorporating effective visual elements into document design
• writing various technical documents, such as memos, proposals, letters, reports, etc.
• learning effective oral presentation techniques

Assignments  
The course work consists of reading and writing assignments. For virtually all of your writing assignments, you will write two drafts: first and final. Your first draft will be reviewed by one of your classmates. You should turn in both your final draft and the first draft with your classmate’s comments.

Following are the specific assignments and a brief description for each:

Class Participation (100 Points)
Attendance is mandatory. Being present in class is a good start but not enough. As part of this class, you’re expected to contribute to our collaborative learning. Learning happens not only between the teacher and students but also between students as well. Therefore, you’re expected to actively participate in our class discussions, group work, and other forms of collective learning.

Introductory Memo (100 Points)
This will be your first memo in this class as a way to introduce yourself to me: who you’re, what you major is, what career goals you have, what writing courses you’ve taken, what you hope to gain from this class, what your writing strengths and weaknesses are, etc.  

Visual Design (200 Points)
For this assignment, you’ll find a one-to-two-page document that’s poorly designed in both content and format. You’ll carefully revise and redesign this document to make it an effective one. You’ll also write a memo to the author of the document, who happens to be your boss, to explain why the original document was not well designed and why your revision is effective.

Instructional Design (200 Points)
You’ll write some effective instructions for a certain product, such as a software feature, for an appropriate audience.

Final Project (400 Points)
This will be a group project. You’ll work in groups of 3-4 to do a real technical writing design for a real client. You’ll be responsible for finding the client and the project. The project could be a brochure, a grant proposal, a consulting proposal, a recommendations report, an annual report, a web site, a policy manual, a user’s guide or tutorial, or any other technical writing product.

Important*       A passing grade for all the assignments is a prerequisite to, but not a guarantee for, passing the course. Observe the following rules closely:

• You must complete all the major assignments. If you miss any of the projects, you will automatically fail the class.
• Your reports and assignments should be presentable. If you hand in poorly proofread documents, they will be returned to you for correction before they are graded.
• If you miss a class, it is your responsibility to find out the assignments you missed. An excused absence will not get you off the hook for a tardy assignment.
• A Special Note: Submit your work on time. Late assignments are generally NOT accepted unless for extenuating circumstances. Work is considered late after class begins on the due date, unless noted otherwise. In cases where late work is accepted, there is a 10% grade reduction for each day your assignment is late.
• All projects must be submitted electronically via email unless you’re instructed otherwise.

Grading
Since your final course grade will be based predominantly on writing assignments and the grading of writing cannot be reduced to simple quantitative measures, I will grade your writing on a holistic basis. Each assignment will have specific grading criteria, which I will explain in class. Generally, however, the three general criteria below will be applied to all the major assignments:

Purpose:How effectively does the document accomplish its intended task?

• meet its goals and the demands of its context (both academic and organizational)? solve a problem or address a significant organizational need? help people?
• provide a sound argument in support if its claims?
• meet readers’ needs and expectations? Improve relations between people?
• provide relevant, useful, and accurate information?

Product: How well constructed is the document?

• orderly and coherent presentation of material?
• effective design and formatting? Correctness?
• effective use of visuals?
• professional tone and style?

Production: How effectively was the document produced?

• quality of planning, collaboration, research & invention, drafting, editing, proofreading?

The following is a general description of expectations for assignments for each grade:
A
Your project is of impeccable (or almost impeccable) quality in both content and format design, with no major weaknesses in any area. It provides adequate information that users need and effectively fulfills the intended purposes. Presentation is of professional quality. There’re few to no mechanical errors.

B
Your project is of high quality in most of the major areas. It fulfills the user’s needs and your intended purposes quite effectively. Presentation is quite professional. There’re only a few mechanical errors.

C
Your project is of reasonable quality in most areas. It fulfills the user’s needs and your intended purposes to a large extent, although major deficiencies are observable. Presentation is of semi-professional quality. There’re some mechanical errors, but not to the extent of seriously affecting readers’ comprehension.

D
Your project is of acceptable quality in most areas. It fulfills the user’s needs and your intended purposes to some extent, but major deficiencies exist in several areas. Presentation quality is acceptable but low. There’re quite some mechanical errors.

F
Your project is unacceptable in quality. It does not fulfill the user’s needs or your intended purposes. Major deficiencies are observed in most areas. Presentation quality is poor, and there’re too many mechanical errors.

Assignment  Submission
Here’re some general guidelines concerning assignment submission. Please follow them  carefully.

• All assignments are to be turned in electronically, unless instructed otherwise. Generally, this means you email your assignment to me as an attachment either in Word or rtf format. The electronic submission benefits both you and me in several ways: you have some evidence of submission, plus the submission time; it’s easier for me to comment electronically on your project; and I tend to write a lot more electronically than with a pen.
• All assignment files must be named in specific ways, generally the assignment name followed by your last name in parentheses, e.g., “Intro(Gu).doc.” This is mainly for my convenience when saving your file.