If you have registered and this is your first time in the class, you should:

1. Make sure you meet the technical requirements listed on the help page and get the required plug-ins.
2. Read Getting Started to learn how the course will be delivered.
3. Look at the overview of the course.

Then read the syllabus, enter the class, communicate with others in the class, view additional resources from Cline Library, or get technical help.

Course Overview and Philosophy

I am going to introduce you to a new way of learning this semester. Contrary to what you may be thinking in signing up for a web-based course, the key to this new way does not have anything to do with technology, although we will use that technology to our advantage. But what you have to learn here goes far beyond the technology: It has much more to do with you and with how you learn. To introduce you to this new way of learning, think of anything you already really know how to do.

Objectives
1. To master the types of effective writing typical of business, industry, and government.

2. To develop the analytical power to determine the requirements of any writing situation, the ways to generate the information to fulfill these requirements, and the skills to put it all together into a polished piece of written work that will knock your boss' socks off and win you the love, trust, admiration, and/or screaming,raging jealousy of your co-workers, friends, and enemies. (You get to pick who gets what.)

3. To develop a prose style that will meet the demands of the technical environment, yet be flexible enough to be under your control to meet the demands of any environment.

4. To learn to use graphics as an effective and indispensible first component of all technical writing.

5. To learn the forms and formats typical of the working world: reports, letters, memos, abstracts, etc.

Modules

Technical Writing is divided into 3 modules. To complete the course successfully, complete the modules in the order shown below:

1. The Rhetoric of Technical Communication
2. The Process of Technical Writing
3. Forms and Formats in Technical Communication

E-mail Greg Larkin at Gregory.Larkin@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-4911

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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED