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Contact
Information and Office Hours
Instructor:
Jennifer Sheppard
Email: jasheppa@nmsu.edu
Office & Phone: English 119, 646-2317
Office Hours: Mondays & Wednesdays 12:30-1:30, 2:30-3:30,
& by appointment (people who get A's in class make frequent use
of these hours)
Course
Description
This advanced
course is designed to help you examine and gain experience with the
specialized writing in your field of study. By focusing on the rhetorical
demands of writing about technical, scientific, and professional communication,
you will learn practical and theoretical approaches for researching
and developing content for multiple audiences. By analyzing the purpose,
audience, and context of various communicative situations, you will
be able to create print and electronic documents that successfully achieve
their intended objective.
Since students in this course come from various majors, the assignments
are structured as opportunities for investigating the communicative
practices of a campus- or community-based non-profit organization. Working
collaboratively with other class members, a major portion of your grade
will be based on a multipart project in which you develop hands-on,
practical communication. By addressing the rhetorical needs of your
chosen client, these assignments will help you learn both currently
accepted standards for various genres, as well as strategies for analyzing
and adapting to new situations.
Finally, this course is intended to help you make the transition from
student to professional by developing the communicative practices necessary
for your field. In addition to research into disciplinary expectations
and experience with various rhetorical aspects of technical writing,
we will also explore how professional writers conceive of their experiences
and work.
Course
Goals
- Understand
the rhetorical nature of technical writing
- Understand
the communicative conventions of your field and how they function, particularly
with regard to technical and/or scientific writing
- Improve
your processes for project planning and development
- Understand
how to address the rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, context)
to shape the development of technical documents
- Develop
strategies for learning technical and scientific information and conducting
specialized research
- Demonstrate
that you understand how to design, write, test, and revise textual and
visual communication
- Demonstrate
how to integrate written content, graphics, and basic design principles
in order to create usable, reader-friendly documents
- Succeed
in working effectively and efficiently within collaborative groups
Required
Materials (available in the campus bookstore)
Service-Learning
in Technical and Professional Communication. by Melody Bowdon
and J. Blake Scott. Allyn & Bacon Publishers, 2003.
Writing
a Professional Life: Stories of Technical Communicators On and Off the
Job. by Gerald J. Savage and Dale L. Sullivan. Allyn &
Bacon Publishers, 2001.
CD RW(s)
for backing up, sharing, and turning in work.
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