Visual Rhetoric Tutorial

This interactive tutorial is designed to supplement your use of TCTC, and provides new information and activities that will enhance your understanding of visual rhetoric. This tutorial has five main sections, Visual Rhetoric, Use of Visuals, Types of Visuals, Color, and Design. With only a few variations, each section is divided into smaller three- to five-page chapters, all arranged using three basic types of pages.

Dobrin, Sidney I., Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. TCTC. Academic>Course Materials>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Texts and Technologies: Situating the Visual in Technoculture

In Western culture, we now understand that visual representations influence our thinking, but we don’t always fully comprehend the extent of that influence, nor do we understand precisely how that influence is exercised. In this course, we will gain a fuller understanding of the influence of the visual on meaning, by thinking with, about, and through the visual.

Kitalong, Karla Saari. University of Central Florida. Academic>Courses>Visual Rhetoric

Web Design

TC 437 is a project-oriented course in website design. Implementation is not emphasized. Students receive a grounding in rhetoric, hypertext theory, user interface design, graphic design, and project management as these apply to the Web. Students also study the societal and ethical contexts of the Web and Internet.

Farkas, David K. University of Washington-Seattle (2003). Academic>Courses>Undergraduate>Web Design

Web Design

Web Design is an incredibly fun skill to learn - combining the latest toys of technology with the creativity of design! On top of that, learning web design is unique in that we can learn directly from current professionals who publish their techniques for all to read on their own Web-logs!

Wikiversity. Academic>Courses>Web Design

Web Spinning: Developing Information Architecture and Content for the Web

This course will help you understand the process for developing the architecture and writing the content for informational websites. Proceeding from a rhetorical standpoint that emphasizes audience, purpose, and context, you will investigate and apply recent audience research, proven usability principles, and traditional design guidelines to critique as well as to design effective websites.

Lippincott, Gail. University of North Texas (2003). Academic>Courses>Information Design>Web Design

Website Design Tutorial

This web tutorial is designed for students making their first web pages. No previous experience writing HTML is expected. This tutorial will introduce you to the basic concepts of HTML code and will guide you through the creation of several practice web pages. Using this tutorial you will learn the skills you need to start making your own web sites.

Dobrin, Sidney I., Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. TCTC. Academic>Course Materials>Web Design

What About Writing?  

Like many businesses, many academic programs in professional and technical communication attempt to promote themselves as unique and as fulfilling a particular niche. Such specific orientations can serve a marketing function. For instance, some professional and technical programs use their advertising literature to promote classes that train students in the uses of cutting edge technologies. And as this conference's call for proposals suggests, some programs may begin to focus primarily on a particular type of technical communication such as computer documentation, medical writing, or multimedia.

Praetorius, Pete. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>WPA>Marketing

What Can Technical Communication Programs Learn from Corporate Universities?  

As technical communications programs consider our own strategic program development it is important for us to consider a variety of program development models that exist both within and outside of traditional university contexts. This presentation will present alternative models for program development employed by leading corporate universities. These programs emphasize on-demand learning, immersion and experiential learning, and highly accountable educational experiences. The presentation will not argue that technical communication programs should simply import these models from corporate settings. Instead, it will suggest that corporate approaches bring many important issues to the table that strategic program developers need to evaluate and discuss as they consider their own program development.

Faber, Brenton D. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education

What is Fair Maternity Leave?

Your division’s new manager, a woman, believes that your company’s policy regarding maternity leave is inadequate, even though the previous manager claimed it met federal minimum requirements. She designates you and 3-4 others to investigate the issue. Discover what minimum federal requirements (if any) are in place and what standards are common among other companies in your chosen industry. Designate responsibility evenly among group members and discuss your findings. Your instructor may have you compile the results as a report.

Lannon, John M. Pearson Education (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Management>Workplace

What's the Balance? Technical Communicator or Technical Communicator?  

When developing a technical communication program, program developers need to determine how technical their programs will be. In my part of the country, for example, the prevailing philosophy for many years was that you could take technical people and teach them to write easier than you could take trained communicators and teach them the needed technical information. Ads for technical communicators across the country scream for knowledge and sometimes expertise in a wide range of computer software, and usually it is not only knowledge of formatting technical documents as in Frame, or Power Point, or HTML, but also knowledge of and again sometimes expertise about the scientific and technical subjects about which they write.

Little, Sherry Burgus. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Technology

Where Do I List This on My CV? Considering the Values of Self-Published Web Sites    

This essay explores the question: 'Given the high value that most institutions put on scholarship that appears in refereed journals or in books produced by well-respected presses, how are innovative, intellectually valuable, well-researched, self-published Web sites to be counted in the processes of promotion, merit, tenure, review, and recognition?'

Krause, Steven D. CCC (2003). Careers>Academic>Quality

Why and How Our Institutional Home Matters: Strategic Program Planning in a Specific Setting  

My presentation will address the conference question of how institutional setting affects program focus and development. The answer, at least as we understand it so far, turns out to be fairly complex. In our case, for example, the recent changes to our Technical Writing degree have been directly responsive to rapid changes in the field of technical communication, in evolving technologies, and in the importance of information systems and web-related writing and design for technical communicators, At the same time, it is clearly the case that an equally strong influence has been the internal pressures we feel as we find ourselves competing with other departments at CMU for students who had once been a kind of private preserve, And this pressure involves more than competition for students. An equally important value at stake is our perceived status and role within our department and our university.

Schnakenberg, Karen R. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Rhetoric

Working Day: 9 to 5

A video documentary about the appropriate use of computer technologies in the workplace, which may be useful in talking about workplace ethics.

Johnson, Rachel. EServer (2006). Academic>Course Materials>Ethics>Workplace

World Lecture Hall: English/Writing/Rhetoric

WLH contains links to course materials for university-level courses. Some, though not all, of these courses are offered entirely over the Internet. Some, though not all, offer college credit through distance learning. All are courses offered at accredited colleges and universities around the world, and all course materials reachable through WLH are free and publicly available.

World Lecture Hall. Academic>Courses

World Wide Web Publishing of Technical Information

This course will prepare students to: * identify and discuss principles of design and information architecture that apply to web pages and web sites * evaluate the design and architecture of existing web sites and recommend appropriate revisions * design different types of pages and sites * test the usability of pages and sites * use appropriate software to implement effective and ethical decisions regarding the design and architecture of sites

Dragga, Sam. Texas Tech University (1999). Academic>Courses>Web Design>Writing

Writing a Research Paper

Despite the illusion, the research-paper writing process (as with any writing process) is quasi-linear at best. Follow the green navigation bar on the left from top to bottom to follow the nine major steps in writing a research paper.

Hamid, Sarah. Purdue University. Academic>Writing

Writing and Designing for the Web (573G)

This class focuses on effective writing and design for online environments--with particular emphasis on the Web. While grounded in relevant theory, this course has a workshop format, with an emphasis on hands-on, collaborative learning.

Krause, Tim. Metropolitan State University (2005). Academic>Courses>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric

Writing and Presenting Your Thesis or Dissertation

A practical Guide to assist in the crafting, implementing and defending of a graduate school thesis or dissertation. Authored by S. Joseph Levine, Michigan State University (levine@msu.edu).

Levine, S. Joseph. Learner Associates (1998). Academic>Writing>Rhetoric

Writing at Work: Business Writing

This course is designed for upper division students in a business field who will write in their future employment. Successful employees know how to communicate clearly and effectively, changing writing style and content for varying audiences and purposes. This class will focus on the difficult task of meeting readers' needs while simultaneously representing your best interests and those of your employer. To meet that end, the assignments will cover a variety of tasks produced under different circumstances, some done quickly during class and some polished and perfected over time. Students completing the semester's work should see a visible improvement in their writing, especially in terms of clarity and precision.

Smith, Sue. University of Arizona (2005). Academic>Courses>Business Communication

Writing Exercises in Science

The purpose of these exercises is to give you a chance to write well-crafted paragraphs. The first three exercises (Basic Points about Paragraphs, Classifying, and Using Transitions) help you write brief paragraphs about various topics in science and technology. The exercises that follow help you write longer paragraphs. The last two exercises (Cause and Effect and Giving Examples) show you how you can write two or more paragraphs connected to the same topic.

Kimball, Jack. Fauxpress (1996). Academic>Course Materials

Writing for the Web

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to several new writing genres that are based on "Web 2.0" technology, which include mostly database-driven websites such as blogs, wikis, and virtual environments. These sites are designed to facilitate collaboration and discussion, rather than the one-to-many model of the typical website in which readers do not participate beyond reading or viewing material. Although many of these technologies are used for entertainment, they are also finding their way into professional settings. For instance, a game such as Second Life might be adapted for use in the workplace, allowing employees at distant locations to occupy the same virtual space and model behaviors or objects that would be impractical in physical space.

Barton, Matt. MattBarton.net (2008). Academic>Courses>Web Design>Writing

Writing For the Workplace

This course is designed to help you accomplish the following goals: To give you practice understanding, analyzing, and responding to writing situations. To help you recognize, learn and use persuasive strategies. To help you construct rhetorically effective arguments. To write to multiple audiences, recognizing and anticipating their differing needs. To recognize and use effectively different standard genres. To learn about and incorporate document design into your writing process.

L'Eplattenier, Barbara. University of Arkansas-Little Rock (2002). Academic>Courses>Writing>Persuasive Design