As a student in English 271-02, Technical Communication at Minnnesota State University, Mankato, you will have the opportunity to learn to write technical documents successfully, critique your colleagues' technical communication work, improve your technical writing skills, work independently on writing technical writing projects, work cooperatively on a technical communication project, and use appropriate hardware and software.

This course offers students in various disciplines a critical view of the technologies now shaping workplace communication and our society as a whole. Using rhetorical theories of technology, we will examine the historical roots of communication technology and explore a number of economic and ethical issues spawned by the computer revolution.

This course will focus on the fundamentals of developing digital multimedia using a range of software, hardware, and electronic equipment. Through readings, class discussion and multimedia projects, you'll learn to apply rhetorical principles (audience analysis, invention, organization, style, design) to multimedia authoring; to learn production techniques for multimedia development (including CD-ROM, streaming video, DVD video and Flash interactivity), from storyboarding to nonlinear editing; to plan and manage collaborative multimedia projects; to master software genres commonly used for multimedia training program in education and industry.

In this course, you can expect to recognize and be able to analyze rhetorical features of various genres of professional/technical information (written, oral, visual and electronic), especially rhetorical contexts, purposes and audiences.