A collaborative project in a college freshman technical writing class produced multiple benefits to those involved. The project, designed to be an experiential and investigatory writing assignment rather than a perfunctory one, challenged students to identify a campus problem regarding enrollment procedures and to work through the problem-solving…

This study summarizes courses and programs in scientific and technical communication during the past 20 years. The results show that there has been a rapid increase in the number of courses and programs offered at two-year and four-year colleges and universities, as well as a 500% increase in the number of schools offering courses. The results…

This course instruction manual for Oklahoma State University-Okmulgee's Technical Writing II Course emphasizes preparation, data collection, organization, style, and format in the composition of memos, business letters, resumes, reports, and proposals. Major course objectives include organizing, composing, and presenting memos, letters, and…

Discusses how technical writing courses have been built on a strong foundation in freshman English at the College of Technology of the University of Houston. (HM)

Discusses a one-semester course offered in the School of Chemical Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana which incorporates technical writing and the use of the chemical literature into a single course. (CS)

This paper focuses first on the educator, Ralph W. Tyler, who serves as a model and ideal for curriculum development and implementation. The paper states that in 1949, Tyler, in creating a syllabus, created a small book of 128 pages, and in so doing, he set a benchmark in the field of education. The paper then provides an extended syllabus for a…

Designed chiefly for the growing number of technical and business writing teachers in two year colleges, this collection of articles helps teachers understand technology and business students so that they can teach courses that satisfy the writing needs of those students. Written by practicing teachers or writers, the articles offer viewpoints on…

The General Motors Institute (GMI), a wholly owned subsidiary of the General Motors Corporation, was created to provide leaders for its parent organization. GMI is a fully accredited undergraduate college that offers degrees in industrial, electrical, and mechanical engineering and in industrial administration. Since people in business and…

Draft specifications for an undergraduate course in professional writing, designed to teach practical writing skills, are presented in this paper. The paper notes the need for such a course to prepare professional personnel for the writing they do in their jobs, and it suggests that the course be aimed at juniors and seniors in liberal arts,…

An English course tailored to the needs of non-English majors has been developed and implemented at West Texas State University. Students from the business world as well as from a wide variety of disciplines participate in the course, which empahsizes the principles of communication. In addition to a text specifically written for the course,…

This paper describes an instructional unit that prepares students as job seekers. The five-session instructional unit employs a team-teaching approach in which a technical writing instructor stresses format, content, and mechanics, and a counselor emphasizes decision making, intrapersonal communications, and interview techniques. The following…

Describes a management communication course that programs class activities but not individual student participation, delegating some routine activities to students and enabling teachers to handle larger classes. Discusses the workbook and assignment structure, evaluation and grading procedures, and positive student evaluations of the course. (RL)

Describes the development and use of sentence combining exercises at a midwestern university and presents the results of a test to determine the effects of the exercises on syntactic maturity and mechanics. (HTH)

Describes a graduate course that integrates written, oral, and organizational communication and is designed to meet the needs of both masters and doctoral students. (FL)

Describes a three-week section of a business communication course on the strategies of crisis communication. Provides background on the emergence of the field, a summary of several notable case studies for possible consideration, and suggestions on how crisis communication can be successfully integrated into the business communication curriculum.…