Oral Presentations in Professional Settings

This course is designed to help you improve your oral presentation skills and strengthen your ability to make a good argument and communicate effectively to an audience. You will gain these skills by studying rhetorical principles, analyzing other presentations, and practicing your own speaking.

Ratliff, Clancy. University of Minnesota (2004). Academic>Courses>Presentations>Rhetoric

Technical and Professional Writing

To understand technical documents as audience-centered and write for a target audience. To realize that knowledge is socially constructed and that writing is determined to a large extent by context. To improve grammar, mechanics, and style. To write for the Internet and become familiar with the weblog as a writing genre. To design and test a set of instructions. To use software tools, simple design principles, and effective typography to create documents with superior readability and usability. To create a major report using multiple information-gathering techniques, including library research and interview. To learn the differences among various writing genres used in the workplace, including the memo, proposal, progress report, and research report.

Ratliff, Clancy. University of Minnesota (2003). Academic>Courses>Writing>Technical Writing

Technical Writing Module

In this course, students will master two important aspects of technical communication: its genres and its process. Students will learn and apply several primary genres of technical communication, including the résumé and cover letter, the memo, the proposal, the abstract, the progress report, and the empirical report. Students will use these genres to document their research progress and results. Students will also learn and use the technical writing process.

Ratliff, Clancy. University of Minnesota (2003). Academic>Courses>Writing>Technical Writing

Writing to Inform, Convince, and Persuade

This course introduces the writing process and the types of academic writing you may be expected to complete in your college career such as research papers, argumentative papers, and literature reviews. The course is designed to help you develop a clear thesis in a written paper and support that thesis with appropriate sources. Time will be spent discussing rhetorical elements in writing such as audience, purpose, and argumentative structure. In addition, you will practice steps in the writing process such as invention, research, organization, drafting, revision, and editing. Your assignments will report, synthesize, and draw conclusions regarding the significance of what you read. Assignments may include 1) summary or abstract; 2) rhetorical analysis; (3) short thesis paper; (4) prospectus; (5) evaluation or review of literature; (6) research paper. Some courses are taught in a computer classroom and some in a traditional classroom.

Ratliff, Clancy. University of Minnesota (2003). Academic>Courses>Writing>Rhetoric