In this course, students build on the writing and rhetorical skills they developed in Composition 1 to explore how technical communication documents shape work and public spaces. Students develop their knowledge about technical genres and their conventions. Then, students learn how to create documents that respond to an audience’s needs, contexts, and purposes.

To deepen an understanding of technical writing genres, students complete four projects. In the technical genre analysis, students compare and analyze how technical genres use conventions to transmit important messages. Then, students use the knowledge they got from the first project to produce a technical genre in the technical genres in context project. In the third project, students team up with their classmates in the multigenre advocacy campaign, which asks them to propose a topic to research and advocate for using different genres. Finally, students will curate their work – research, notes, drafts, revisions, etc. – to create a reflective portfolio.

• Syllabus, revised 07.29.24
• Grading Contract, revised 7.13.2023

• Individual Assignment Sheets
  
• Assignment 1 Description
• Assignment 2 Description
• Assignment 3 Description
• Assignment 4 Description

Thinking Rhetorically about Audiences, Cultures, and Experiences
Technical writers write for audiences, and those audiences are almost never made up of people who think in the exact same ways as the writer(s). Part of being an effective technical communicator is understanding who your audience is, knowing their level of knowledge about your topic, and figuring out what they hope to gain from consulting your document. As the semester progresses, you will write in a range of technical genres for several different audiences. To help you learn how to do so effectively, we will center and practice principles of ethical technical communication and user-centered design.

We will begin each major assignment with a reading that allows us to examine a technical genre in detail while also learning about how technical writers adapt their texts based on the cultures, experiences, and needs of their audiences. For each example text, we’ll consider how the writer’s own experience and their audiences’ expectations shape the decisions they make as technical writers and document designers. During each project, we will choose and then research a specific audience so that you may design your documents to suit your audience’s needs. These practices will help us better understand how all writing is grounded in lived experiences of the cultures we come from and how those things impact our ability to communicate ethically with our audiences.

• Teaching Technical Writing
• Professional and Technical Writing Pedagogies Slides
• Tech Comm Pedagogies: A Brief Bibliography

NOTE: There are currently no library guides that relate directly to ENGL 10303, but the guides for ENGL 10203 may also be helpful, since the ENGL 10303 curriculum mirrors ENGL 10203 using technical genres. Please know that you you will need to adapt these materials to suit technical communication genres.

• ENGL 10203 LibGuide (UofA Libraries)

NOTE: We are building resources for the new ENGL 10303 curriculum. Please be patient as we gather samples – and if you are teaching 10303 and have assignment samples, please send them to katg AT uark DOT edu.