Course Descriptions All Courses Classroom Courses Distance Learning Courses

Updated: 11/22/2009 13:25:30

BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATIONS

CLASSROOM

8 Week Session January 19 - March 14


16 Week Session January 19 - May 16

DISTANCE LEARNING

16 Week Session January 19 - May 16


12 Week Session February 15 - May 16


8 Week Session March 22 - May 16

Course Descriptions All Courses

ETWR 1372 Grammar/Style
A study of the principles of an effective professional or technical style, stressing clarity, exactness, and readability. Topics include a review of grammar and punctuation, an introduction to copy editing, and editing and revision skills. Prerequisite: ENGL 1301.

ETWR 1373 Government and Business Correspondence
A course focused on business correspondence delivered through common media (business letters, memos, e-mail, and reports), across organizational hierarchies (work associates at lower, same, and higher organizational levels), and based in typical situations (good news, bad news, policy and schedule changes, information requests, reprimands, rationales, denials, and other tricky business-communication situations). Emphasizes clear, tactful, succinct, direct, well-structured writing that gets the job done. Prerequisite: Basic computer familiarity and typing skills.

ETWR 1376 Grant Proposals and Business Plans
A study of two important forms of the proposal: the grant proposal and the new-business plan (also known as business "prospectus"). Students learn how to find grants, analyze their requirements, and then write a successful grant proposal. Students also plan a business startup, do funding and marketing research for it, and then write a business plan promoting the startup to potential investors. Prerequisite: Strong writing and computer skills.

ETWR 1377 Indexing and Document Control
A study of the fundamentals of indexing documents, both print and online. Includes critique of existing indexes and brief indexing exercises focusing on processes for rough-drafting indexes. Students learn to revise and fine-tune other writers' rough-draft indexes as well as their own. Students learn processes for developing consistent indexes as a documentation team. The course includes an introduction to indexing tools in desktop publishing software such as Word and FrameMaker as well as software applications commonly used for document control. Prerequisite: Strong writing and computer skills.

ETWR 1391 Special Topics in English Technical and Business Writing
Topics address recently identified current events, skills, knowledge, and/or attitudes and behaviors pertinent to the technology or occupation and relevant to the professional development of the student, including portfolio development. May be taken a second time for credit when topics vary. Student Project - Course topic, schedule, and requirements negotiated by individual instructor and student. Students engage in writing projects involving tutorials, user guides, and researched reports covering such areas as special techniques with FrameMaker, Word, Dreamweaver, RoboHelp, Author-IT; entry-level tutorials for mainstream software in demand by area employers; and research topics such as corporate implementation of usability review, inclusion of formal editing in the documentation process, and other such topics.

ENGL 2311 Technical and Business Writing
Principles, techniques, and skills needed to conduct scientific, technical, or business writing. Instruction in the writing of reports, letters, and other exercises applicable to a wide range of disciplines and careers. Emphasis on clarity, conciseness, and accuracy of expression. Research techniques, information design, effective use of graphics, and preparation and presentation of oral reports will be covered. ENGL 2311 meets the General Education written-communication requirement for workforce education degree plans. Students planning to transfer to a 4-year university should take ENGL 1301 and ENGL 1302 to satisfy Core Curriculum requirements for English Rhetoric/Composition. Workforce educational programs require either ENGL 2311 or ENGL 1301 for the General Education requirement. Students should consult the college catalog or an advisor to determine which course is required by their degree plan.

ETWR 2364 Practicum (or Field Experience) -- English Technical and Business Writing
Practical general training and experiences in the workplace. The college with the employer develops and documents an individualized plan for the student. The plan relates the workplace training and experiences to the student's general and technical course of study. The guided external experiences may be for pay or no pay. This course may be repeated if topics and learning outcomes vary.

ETWR 2374 Online Helps and Help-Authoring Tools
Workshop-style course in which students study the evolution and function of online helps; critique existing online helps; learn structuring principles and navigation tools common in online helps; create online helps using several leading online help-authoring tools such as RoboHELP and AuthorIT; and write their own online helps for a software product. Prerequisite: Strong computer and writing skills.

ETWR 2375 Writing Statistics for Information Specialists
This course focuses on summarizing and explaining statistical information, not only with words but also with tables, graphs, and charts; emphasizes the proper design and placement of tables, charts, and graphs; and features methods for converting these materials to other media and for dynamically linking statistical information contained in electronic databases and spreadsheets. Prerequisite: Strong computer and writing skills.

ETWR 2379 Editing Government, Business and Technical Information
Instruction and practice in proofreading, copyediting, and substantive editing skills necessary to ensure high-quality, readable, usable, well-designed documents in business, government, and industry. Gives students a working understanding of the role of the technical editor as collaborator and decision maker in the entire publication process. Topics include online editing, revising, hypertext, graphics, visual design, and project estimating. Prerequisite: Strong writing skills.

ETWR 2472 Technical Publications with Adobe FrameMaker
Workshop-style course in which students use Adobe FrameMaker to practice the structure and design of user documents; create fully "automated" book-length technical documents complete with automated tables of contents, indexes, table and figure numbers, and cross-references; and learn other FrameMaker features for rapid updating. Emphasis on teamwork and the project title in addition to organization, format, and style of printed technical documents. Prerequisite: Strong computer and writing skills.

ETWR 2473 XHTML and CSS for Information Specialists
Workshop-style course in which students study the concept of hypertext; learn structuring principles and navigation tools common in online information; create web pages using XHTML and CSS; get an introduction to web-page development tools such as Dreamweaver; and overview documentation trends such as structured authoring, single-sourcing, and XML. Prerequisite: Strong Internet, computer, and writing skills.

ETWR 2476 Technical Publications with MS Word
In this workshop-style course, students practice structuring, designing, and writing book-length documents (books, reports, or both) using the automation and productivity features in Microsoft Word. In addition to composing clear readable text and practicing good document design, students create customized character and paragraph styles, templates, automated tables of contents, indexes, cross-references, table and figure numbers, and other numbering streams. Prerequisite: Strong computer and writing skills.

ETWR 2478 XML and Structured Authoring for Information Specialists
Introduces XML and related technologies focusing on their application in business, government, and technical communications. In addition to an overview of the raw materials needed to create and transform XML (DTDs, schemas, XSL and CSS stylesheets), the course introduces students to industry-standard solutions such as DocBook, DITA and the related tools, both commercial and open source. Students learn to create and validate XML documents and to transform them into a variety of output formats (HTML, CHM, PDF, RTF, MIF). Students also learn the origins and evolution of SGML and XML and how to evaluate the appropriateness of an XML-based solution for various situations they might encounter as professionals. Prerequisite: Knowledge of HTML; strong computer and Internet skills.