In this course, students will increase their understanding of how language works and will learn to make choices about language, style, and punctuation to create messages that are clear, concise, and useful. The course emphasizes technical communication, but the skills learned can be applied to any communication situation. Editing practice will include three levels of editing to make the documents comprehensible and useful in which students will not only polish their grammar and punctuation skills, but they will also learn how to explain and justify changes they make in documents. Topics also included in the course are editing methods for both paper and electronic copy and editing for organization and visual design.

This course introduces students to technical and professional writing through various readings and assignments in which students analyze and create texts that work to communicate complex information, solve problems, and complete tasks. Students gain knowledge of workplace genres as well as to develop skills in composing such genres. This course allows students to practice rhetorically analyzing writing situations and composing genres such as memos, proposals, instructions, research reports, and presentations. Students work in teams to develop collaborative content and to compose in a variety of modes including text, graphics, video, audio, and digital. Students also conduct both primary and secondary research and practice usability testing. The course emphasizes creating documents that are goal-driven and appropriate for a specific context and audience.

In this course students develop oral presentation skills for technical or professional topics. Areas of study in the course include visual communication, audience analysis, presentation strategies, and presentation of complex research material. The course emphasizes use of digital technologies. Recommend that students take Comm 1101 or equivalent first

This course approaches the challenges of document design by drawing upon principles from rhetorical theory and scholarship. In practical terms, this means that the design questions addressed in this class are understood in terms of specific audiences and specific contexts. Students in this class will pursue a blend of critical analysis ? drawing on rhetorical principles ? and document design. While Visual Rhetoric and Document Design assumes no baseline design training, class assignments will encourage students to put theory into practice and develop documents that reflect current best practices in print and digital spaces.