Certificate in Professional Technical Communication

Course Code: DED9543
School: Distance-Education.org

Description

The Certificate in Professional Technical Communication is designed to help new and existing writers work within a range of styles specific to the field of technical writing. This program focuses on writing styles and competencies that are necessary for successful technical communication and impact on reports, project proposals, feasibility studies, website communication, presentations, manuals, and other forms of technical correspondence.

A well-rounded technical writer should have knowledge and writing experience across various areas. Not all tech writers will specialize in a specific area, but just the same it is likely that in ones career you will be called upon to author or edit a particular text. By applying the principles that will be taught, from proposals to magazine articles to user guides and beyond, you can extend your capacity to cover a wide range of projects. Just as importantly, you can gain a broad set of skills that will benefit every project. The organizational skills required for a user guide, the attention to client guidelines required for a proposal, and the ability to weave in examples and interviews required for a technical magazine article can carry over into other types of writing. Your proposals will be more organized, your articles more aware of the audience's expectations, and your user guides more interesting in their use of examples.

After an evaluation of submitted writing samples students will be awarded an accredited Official Certificate in Professional Technical Communication from The University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

No books are required for this course although there are ample links to multiple resources. You may complete this program a quickly as you care to but it is advised that you work your way through each lesson in a systematic manner. It is recommended that you take 6-10 weeks to complete the full Certificate in Professional Technical Communication Program.

Types of Document

Different types of technical document require different skills. There is certainly much overlap in the required skills, but in general they are strongly emphasized in the following types of documents:

• Proposals: persuasion, using data to make an argument, developing abstracts
• Data Reports: presenting data visually, writing with parallel structure
• Scientific Research: using citations, making abstracts concise
• How-To Guides: doing task analysis, working with lists
• User Guides: planning large documents, working with chapters
• Instructional Material: developing sample scenarios, monitoring user performance
• Articles: including real-world examples, being conversational with dense content This course will look at these document types and explore the writing skills associated with each of them

Methodology

Each lesson is carefully developed around the student`s ability to develop a baseline of written content that assumes some knowledge, little knowledge or no knowledge of the technical document they will be working on. Only after reading and applying the tips, techniques and grasping the fundamental and advanced techniques of writing to a specific area can the student of this course reapply this new knowledge to the baseline document. A comparison of the original baseline writing to the developed "treatment" document will allow the student of this program to fully grasp and apply the new knowledge gained to practical writing in the workplace.

Multiple employee and STC Member Discounts

Multiple employee and STC Member Discounts are available.

Tuition Financing

We wish to offer our students the ability to benefit from a generous financing arrangement made possible through TFC Credit Corporation. For more details write to contact@distance-education.org

Outcomes

As a result of engaging in this course of study, all serious minded students will benefit in the following ways:

• Plan writing projects with a strong understanding of the subject matter
• Learn how to fit a focused strategy to your audience and purpose
• Engage in both task and audience analysis
• Learn how to revamp existing or new documents
• Expand writing styles and abilities
• Write like an expert and build upon marketable skills
• Earn a highly recognized Professional Technical Completion Certificate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Assessment

The Certificate in Professional Technical Communication requires that the student engage in independent and self-paced study. The instructional developer of this program has been careful to provide a detailed method of study that when engaged in by the student will lead to outcomes as those described in the outline material below. Self-directed quizzes and short answer probe questions are created to give the student a good sense of if they are on track with their learning objectives. These tasks are for student evaluation only.

In order to earn the official Certificate in Professional Technical Communication the student will be required to submit samples of completed work that will then be evaluated for accuracy and representative knowledge of the subject matter. More details regarding the process leading to the Certificate in Professional Technical Communication are described in detail in the course curriculum.

I'd Like To Enroll In This Course   $1100.00