Student Learning Outcomes

Students will…

• demonstrate Rhetorical Knowledge by focusing on audience, purpose, context, medium, and message in technical communication

   

• demonstrate Critical Thinking, Reading, and Writing by developing writing over time through a series of tasks including finding, evaluating, analyzing, and synthesizing sources into their own ideas, and discussing language, power, and knowledge;

   

• demonstrate Composing Processes through prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing individually and with peers in a range of composing media;

   

• demonstrate Knowledge of Conventions by controlling tone, mechanics, grammar, and documentation in a variety of common formats and genres in technical communication.

   

• discuss the Ethical Concerns of writing technical documents, including the underlying assumptions and implications, and demonstrate how these concerns are resolved in technical documents.

   

• employ Effective and Appropriate Technology to help design and create working technical documents

   

Course Description. English 2210 is a course that focuses on analysis and presentation of scientific and technical information. This course prepares you for a variety of technical writing and information design tasks such as planning and creating procedures, instructions, specifications, formal and informal proposals, reports, usability studies, memos, web pages, manuals, résumés and presentations. This course is rhetorically based so that you will not only learn to write effective documents, but to assess the rhetorical situations and ethics that surround the production of these documents. The best way to assess these situations is to participate directly in projects that have purpose outside the classroom. We will also be exploring the ethics and process of how technical writing creates and represents the world. Whether we are building web sites, interviewing people, or producing documents, the ability to assess the rhetorical effect and effectiveness of the communicative act is critical.