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.

If you want to put design thinking, agile project management, teamwork, writing, research, analysis, and critical thinking on your resume, join Project Design and Development. You will study, plan, research, design, and develop technical communication materials in a design-thinking, collaborative-writing environment. You?ll work in teams to create a user manual and information graphic, promotional materials, and a social media campaign while planning and documenting your projects and productivity. You will leave the course with knowledge and skills you can put to work in any organization: small business, nonprofit, and corporate. The course develops competencies that the National Association of Colleges and Employers has named as most-valued by employers: critical thinking, written communication, collaboration, digital technology, leadership, and professionalism.

WRIT 4662W is an advanced level Writing Studies course that explores various digital writing technologies and provides multiple opportunities to assess writing situations and make appropriate decisions about digital form and production. Students will learn the basic building blocks of writing in Internet environments (text, sound, images, video) as well as the vocabularies, functionalities, and organizing structures of Web 2.0 environments, how these impact understanding and use of information, and how to produce these environments (i.e., multimedia internet documents) for interactivity and use. This course includes design projects and practice with apps, markup language, content management systems, video, and social media. prereq: Jr or sr or instr consent

Usability is concerned with how people interact with design and technology; usability is commonly known as the "ease of use" of products and technologies by a range of users. This course emphasizes usability and user research and will explore the intersection of usability and technical communication. We will investigate definitions of usability and user-centered design principles, and we will explore a variety of usability research methods including heuristic evaluation, personas, and usability testing. The course will focus heavily on usability testing of web sites, a common technical communication task that involves observation and interviews of human participants interacting with a web site.

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