Course Description The purpose of this course is to develop your skills in technical writing that will contribute to your success in your academic and professional careers. We will analyze and discuss the various technological formats that are common in the engineering discipline.  The exercises and assignments are designed to improve your analytical skills and assist you in becoming strong communicators within your field. Collaboration is an important part of this process and together through exchange and interaction we will learn to communicate our knowledge, plans and ideas in a professional manner.

 

This class is also a hybrid online course. In this class, we will combine in-class, person-to-person communication and exercises with online-based assignments, communication and class sessions. This means that a portion of our classes will meet through the online platform, Blackboard. You will be required to ensure that your Blackboard (Bb) account is accessible and functioning.

 

UPDATED CHANGES SINCE CAMPUS SHUTDOWN DUE TO COVID-19

Classes meet online through Blackboard Collaborative Ultra (BCU). We meet live on Mondays and continue to have online-based classes (not live) on Blackboard (BB) on Wednesdays through the end of April. This is in line with my hybrid-based part of the course, but I maintain the option to transfer over to live classes on Wednesdays if deemed necessary. Beginning in May our Monday and Wednesday classes will meet live through BCU. The classes on BCU are recorded for students to access outside of class time, and all online-based classes have notes posted on BB, which has always been a part of this course. I will continue to communicate with students through email, which is my primary mode of communication. I access emails periodically throughout the day from 9am to 8pm, and respond within 24 hours. Students will also be given the option for meeting online through BCU if so desired.

 

Course Learning Outcomes

 

• acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility
• enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment
• negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation
• develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes
• engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond
• formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing
• practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects
• strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)