This course will help you develop your technical writing ability  through extensive practice writing a variety of technical documents, including a research report. You will learn to write useful descriptions, proposals and reports that your intended readers can understand and respond to. You will work on audience, voice, tone, style, and content in your writing. The topics will depend on your own interests and field of study.

If you do well in this course, you will be able to:

1. write the kind of specialized reports required in your present and future occupations;
2. identify the audience for your writing and prepare text suitable for that audience;
3. select and use the appropriate formats and layouts for organizing your material, including plenty of white space;
4. select and/or develop simple, yet appropriate visuals to give impact and clarity to your reports;
5. pursue appropriate research methodology to develop your reports;
6. document your reports correctly and completely;
7. write a well-organized and effective research report.

Possible Assignments Include: (Subject to change each semester. The actual assignments are available in the Syllabus in the Blackboard course site on the first day of classes.)

Your final grade may be based on the following scale. Please note that you must also pass at least several exams in order to pass the course, regardless of your scores on the other assignments.

There are 2 exams in this course.

Last Updated: December 1, 2010