TCO 341 Week One May 19, 2014

Webex session: 8:00-9:30 in Webex

Welcome to Week One! Here are our learning objectives this week:

1. Widen your knowledge of the field of technical communication.
2. Describe the scope of our summer course.
3. Learn to identify and define your audience and purpose.
4. Describe our course objectives and our assignments.
5. Craft a properly-formatted memo in response to a case study.

An Introduction from Dr. Codone

Please watch this 15 minute video from Dr. Codone to understand how our summer class will work.

Pre-Class Survey

Please take this survey to help me understand what you already know.

About Technical Communication -- things to read before May 19

Technical Communication is a large field encompassing several disciplines. We'll discuss the field more in class on Monday, but right now I'd like for you to visit these websites and read about the field from a few different perspectives.

The Society for Technical Communication's introduction to the field

A blog post on technical writing

What is Technical Communication? Wikipedia

All Kinds of Things about Technical Communication

An overview of technical writing

Now, take a moment and watch this 30 second video from Dukati. There are two key people in the commercial, but I want you to notice that the guy testing the motorcycle is also a technical communicator. Xerox has a global publications division in which they employ technical communicators -- people who have skills like those you will learn this semester.

Assignments this Week -- Communication Documents

Our first assignments this week will be to figure out how to determine the audience and purpose for our communication. We'll do this through writing purpose statements. Go ahead and take a look at these documents, but be aware we'll talk about them in class and completion of them is not due until June 2.

Communication Spectrum

Fact A/B purpose statements
Fact A/B homework assignment

Purpose statement scenarios homework

Carlyle-Windsor Case Study

 

Reflection and Discussion

Our main goal this week is to learn about the technical communication field, this class, and to begin looking at some preliminary technical writing assignments. Now that you've obtained a basic understanding, go to our Google doc for class discussion and respond to the prompt at the beginning of the page.

I'll see you Monday night in Webex!