EAS 500: Technical Communication in Engineering Practice

This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students who wish to improve their writing skills by practicing specific writing tasks needed in the fields of Engineering.  Oral-presentation skills are also targeted in the class.  This course is required as preparation for those who will work as Communication Fellows.

NOTE:  This course is not intended to meet the needs of graduate students whose first language is not English. Graduate students whose first language is not English should consider taking EAS 510, Technical Communication and Academic Writing for Non-Native Speakers of English.

Pre-requisites: SEAS undergraduates must have already fulfilled their SEAS Writing Requirement.

Counts toward the Undergraduate TBS (Technology and Business in Society) requirement, and as an elective for the Entrepreneurship minor.  Counts as an elective for graduate students (consult your advisor for specifics).

Course Objectives:  At the end of the course, students will be able to do the following:

• Use written English appropriate for the academic or professional setting to clearly express themselves;
• Use appropriate formats for various documents such as memos, short reports, long reports, and proposals;
• Self-edit effectively and give feedback to other writers;
• Use rubrics to assess their own written and oral work and the work of others.

Text:  Beer & McMurrey (2009) A Guide to Writing as an Engineer (Third Edition). Additional material is available at the Blackboard site for the course.

Topics:

• Analyzing audience and purpose
• Gathering and sorting data:  citing sources, paraphrasing, evaluation of quality of sources
• Organization at all levels:  document, paragraph, sentence
• Academic style (e.g., published papers); Industry style (e.g., technical reports, promotional copy)
• Use of educated, well-formed English in all writing
• Use of logical argumentation to support a position

Students produce the following documents to develop the accuracy, clarity and conciseness of their technical writing:

• Memos and e-mail messages
• Short reports
• Long, formal reports
• Proposals
• Definitions and descriptions
• Process descriptions
• User’s guides
• Position papers

Students practice and present two oral presentations: a product description, and a persuasive argument based on their position paper.