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>From: Jan Schipper <instr -at- NC5 -dot- INFI -dot- NET>
>
>I'm nearing the end of my first year as a college instructor, and I
have
>been assigned to teach Technical Writing to second semester, first year
>college students in the Fall 1999 semester. I need help.
I was a Professional Writing major at Carnegie Mellon University. The
introductory course there, for sophomores and juniors is Introduction to
Professional and Technical Writing. We had several projects that
included:
1) Writing a resume and cover letter
2) Writing a memo (as though we had been asked to improve an exhibit at
a local museum)
3) Writing a proposal (for something on campus)
4) Writing an article (for a local magazine)
5) Writing a brochure (for a clinic, there were topics such as child
abuse, AIDS, birth control, stress, etc.)
6) Writing an instructional guide (how to create a brochure; we user
tested this)
7) Creating a portfolio
In addition to the projects, we had readings that included much of what
others have already mentioned: audience analysis, user testing,
usability, interviewing skills, and editing. We also had weekly homework
assignments from "The Elements of Style." Most of us found this to be
busywork, since we were all English majors. Graduate students actually
took Style as a course. The point was to learn how to write
grammatically and clearly.
We *did not* learn actual computer programs. There were other classes
for that, like Online Information Design and Desktop Publishing. If you
do intend to teach software as a part of the course, personally, I'd
choose Microsoft Word (the advanced features, such as templates, styles,
and revision marks), Adobe PageMaker or Quark Express (Frame is best for
long books, which they won't be doing in this type of class), and
perhaps, if you have the time, HTML or at least an HTML editor. However,
I'm a big writing skills over tool skills person. I also went to a very
computer-oriented school, so we were rather expected to know the tools
already.
