Welcome to Week One! Here are our learning objectives this week:
1. Widen your knowledge of the field of technical communication.
2. Learn to identify and define your audience and purpose.
3. Craft a properly-formatted memo in response to a case study.
4. Describe the scope of our summer course.
First, I hope you viewed the Xerox commercial. If not, click on the picture above! While technical communicators don't always just translate manuals into Portuguese, we are multi-skilled practitioners of communication who help other people communicate better -- like helping Ducati focus on making great motorcycles instead of writing instructions on how to use them. That's why we're in the School of Engineering at Mercer - to help all students become better communicators, which is one of the best skills you can take into your future workplace.
In Week One, please do the following:
Read the following websites to learn more about technical communication:
What is Technical Communication? Wikipedia
All Kinds of Things about Technical Communication
In our Webex discussion, be ready to give me a 1-2 sentence definition of technical communication. Everyone's has to be original -- you can't listen to the person ahead of you and repeat theirs!
Next, complete the following activities:
1. Read the syllabus and schedule (if you click the italicized word "schedule", you can jump directly to it)
2. Listen to the Week 1 Intro Podcast. This is a 5 minute mp3 file that should play in iTunes or any browser.
2. Read Chapter 1 of the Markel book, paying attention to the characteristics of technical documents and measures of excellence in tech comm. Think of some technical documents you have used and what you liked/disliked about them, or how they helped you or did not help you.
3. Read Chapter 5. Knowing your audience and purpose is the MOST important thing you can learn this summer. Read about how to know who your readers are, how they will read and use your document, and how to learn more about your audience.
4. Read Chapter 14 about correspondence. Yes, I know you know how to write emails, but we will focus on memo and letter-writing, which are still methods of correspondence used today. Pay particular attention to memo format for this week.
In our Webex discussion we will talk about types of communication, learn how to write specific purpose statements for all kinds of documents, and how to write a memo in response to a scenario. Reading these three chapters will help you prepare for the discussion.
Documents we will use in our Week 1 discussion in Webex:
Example of Carlyle-Windsor Memo
Again, see the syllabus for what we will cover and what will be due in 2 weeks. If you have questions, send me an email or call!
| Course content copyright 2012 Susan Codone -- Mercer University School of Engineering -- Department of Technical Communication |