Instruction in proofreading and editing skills necessary to assure accuracy in business documents as well as technical documents. Designed to give students a working understanding of the role of the technical editor as collaborator and decision maker in the entire publication process. Topics include online editing, revising, hypertext, graphics, visual design, and project estimating. Integrated with credit ETWR-2379.

A study of two important forms of the proposal: the grant proposal and the new-business plan (also known as business prospectus). Students learn how to find grants, analyze their requirements, and then write a successful grant proposal. Students also plan a business startup, including funding and marketing research, and then write a business plan promoting the startup to potential investors. Integrated with credit ETWR-1376.

Identify the elements of technical writing; state the purpose of a technical document; research information; prepare outlines; construct technical documents using graphical elements; and generate reports and/or work-related documents. Integrated with credit ENGL-2311.

Learn to create audio-visual tutorials for technical products employing the principles of instructional design, user experience, and usability as a foundation to learn and employ audio-video applications like TechSmith, Camtasia and Adobe Captivate. This course was designed to be repeated multiple times if content varies. Combined with credit ETWR-2470. Qualifies for student health insurance.

Learn how to promote organizations, products, and services using social media tools such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Adhering to the rules of online etiquette, learn how to build a community and curate its contributed information so information reliably provides online support for products or services. Put what you learn into practice by using these tools to accomplish one or both of these goals, ideally for a nonprofit. Integrated with credit ETWR-1471.

Practice developing information collaboratively in a wiki application in a controlled, organized fashion. Individually, each student will learn how to install and set up a wiki (such as MediaWiki, which drives Wikipedia); handle basic administrative tasks for the wiki; learn how to create and format wiki pages; link to other wiki pages; comment or even edit others' wiki pages; use the discussion feature to discuss pages with others; and use the history and watch features to document and monitor changes to wiki pages. Although MediaWiki may be the featured wiki application, this course can be changed to feature or include other applications such as Drupal or Joomla, depending on students' preferences. This course features a group information-development project.

Workshop-style course in which students study the concept of hypertext, learn structuring principles and navigation tools common in online information, create web pages using XHTML and CSS, get an introduction to web page development tools such as Dreamweaver; and overview documentation trends such as structured authoring, single-sourcing, and XML. Integrated with credit ETWR-2473.

Introduces XML, DITA, and related technologies focusing on their application in business, government, and technical communications. In addition to an overview of the raw materials needed to create and transform XML (DTDs, schemas, XSL and CSS stylesheets), the course introduces students to industry-standard solutions such as DocBook, DITA and the related tools, both commercial and open source. Students learn to create and validate XML documents and to transform them into a variety of output formats (HTML, CHM, PDF, RTF, MIF). Students also learn the origins and evolution of SGML and XML and how to evaluate the appropriateness of an XML-based solution for various situations they might encounter as professionals.