With a background in technical communications, you’ll be qualified for careers such as:
With a background in technical communications, you’ll be qualified for careers such as:
The technical communications certificate, which is available for remote adult learners, is comprised of any four eight-week technical communications courses. We know your time is valuable, so we designed the certificate to be completable in just two semesters to help you update your skills quickly in a fast-changing job market.
The focus of the technical communications courses are to teach you to theorize how genres of communication construct larger organizational systems. You’ll then be able to apply that theory in practice to adapt existing organizational systems or create new ones per the introduction of new technology with attention to how such technologies will impact organizational culture.
The technical communications minor, which is available for traditional on-campus students, is comprised of one 16-week course, Business and Technical Communication, plus any four eight-week technical communications courses. We’ve designed the minor as a way to enhance any major to boost your employability.
By exploring how technology affects how we communicate in a range of communities and industries, the Technical Communications Minor will teach you how to make smarter choices about technology at work to meet goals and respond to the challenges of tomorrow.
While the Technical Communications minor could enhance any major, we highly recommend it for people majoring in:
Technology mediates all human activity including thought itself. As such, any technological change will affect how we see ourselves and the world around us, which in turn also affects how we communicate and persuade. In this course, students will use rhetorical theory to analyze specific situated contexts to understand how technology structures power and influences belief. From this understanding, students will be better prepared to make critical choices regarding the use of technology in their lives.
In this course, students will learn how elements of design affect how people engage with print, multimedia, and web-based texts, and as such, how those design elements elicit (or hinder) a desired social action. From this understanding, students will learn how to develop protocols for conducting, analyzing, and making recommendations from usability testing.
This course will introduce students to the basic principles and practices of technical editing through working with a diverse array of professional documents in various media from multiple industries. By the end of the course, students will learn strategies for designing processes that respond to the unique demands of specific editing tasks.
This course will familiarize students with key genres of writing related to grants, such as letters of inquiry, applications, assessment documents, and reporting documents. In conversation with local professionals, students will learn rhetorical strategies for designing and composing these documents in response to specific community needs and in relation to stakeholder values.
Designed to strengthen the student’s writing and critical thinking skills by providing a close examination of how the media constructs messages. Tailored to fit the student’s needs for a variety of future career paths, students will explore various genres such as social media, print journalism, advertisements, and documentary film to explore how to read and write these genres.
This course will focus on a topic that’s currently under debate in the field of technical communication. Through summarizing, synthesizing, and responding to scholarly arguments, students will develop their own stance on the special topic based on how the topic relates to their current and future professional endeavors. Some possible special topics may include globalization and communication; communication in health care; plain language; universal design and accessibility; and copyright and fair use.