Alexander, Christopher
MWF 9:10 AM
Park Hall 61
Do you want to ...
… gain a significant edge in today's competitive job market?
… develop your skills with written and visual technologies?
… learn to interpret and design data-driven projects?
… improve your writing's accuracy, concision, clarity, & precision?
… build robots in your dreams? … build robots in real life?
… explore the edges of the known universe?
… control matter, space, or even time itself?
… earn a 3000-level English elective?
If you answered "yes" to some of these questions, consider registering for
ENGL 3590W (Technical & Professional Communication)
instructor Dr. Christopher Alexander (Park Hall 102, cmalex@uga.edu)
texts none required – I will email/print any necessary course texts
Course Objectives, Goals, and Expectations
This course is designed to explore both theoretical and practical applications of technical communications through a variety of different disciplines including biology (cellular, micro, plant), computer sciences, ecology, engineering (agricultural, civil, mechanical), genetics, health sciences, mathematics (applied, computational, cryptographic, statistical), pharmacology, philosophy, psychology, and sociology.
We will engage in technical and professional communications as they operate – as well as how they are perceived – within disciplines not ordinarily associated with these concepts and ideas. We will concentrate on writing in a variety of technical forms of discourse.
We will also emphasize practicing writing processes, secondary research, and problem-solving; recognizing the rhetorical character of scientific and technical discourse with its multiple purposes and audiences; evaluating and integrating a variety of written, visual, and oral elements of design; and developing field-specific vocabularies for talking about this discourse.
Students enrolled in this course can expect to learn the organization, style, and conventions appropriate to various forms of technical communication; practice writing processes, learn research methods, and develop appropriate styles; create effective documents for professional and technical settings, as well as for non-technical audiences; work with each other as a group of professionals, and use multiple communicative technologies.