#25446
This form shows a generic, fill-in-the-blank evaluation form for small- and medium-sized projects.
Barker, Thomas. Texas Tech University (2004). Academic>Course Materials>Project Management
#14505
Read It Or Skip It? The Textbook's Preface 
An informal survey of 18 modern technical writing textbook prefaces finds 75 to 100 percent of them tell readers the books meet students’ needs, contain special topics, have unique philosophies, emphasize the practical, contain sample documents, teach specific types of writing, and contain sections on computers and/or document design. Also, 50 to 75 percent of the prefaces state the books address ethical/legal issues, oral presentations, resumes/ job applications, corporate culture, and punctuation and/or grammar. Such repetitious content in textbook prefaces reduces their usefulness during the textbook selection process.
Ryan, Charlton. STC Proceedings (1994). Academic>Course Materials>Textbooks
#14264
After you begin your career, your professional development activities will affect your potential to succeed. While you may engage in many activities specific to your discipline, reading and understanding professional and technical information will always be important. It would be a mistake to overlook this important skill that can be improved by developing strategic reading practices. In this exercise, you will read a scientific text—employing appropriate reading strategies—and then summarize that information for another reader who is less willing to invest time in the document. To write an effective summary, you must have a reading strategy that will allow you to quickly understand the purpose of the document, the hierarchy of its argument, its applications, and the limits of the author’s claims.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials
#19232
You work for a mid-sized company that has about 700 employees. It is Wednesday afternoon. You learn from a reliable source that your company has just been bought out, but the public announcement will not be made until Friday afternoon. The company’s stock is currently selling at $15 per share. It will certainly jump to $20 within hours of the announcement. You and your spouse have been saving over the past year to buy a house, and have a sizable nest egg of nearly $20,000 in the bank. Your company already has over 20 million shares of its stock outstanding, and tens of thousands of shares are traded every day. No one is likely to notice if an employee were to buy 1000 shares. What do you do? Explain your actions and reasons in writing.
Lannon, John M. Pearson Education (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Ethics
#14273
There are enormous advantages and disadvantages to using the Internet as a source for research. The Internet can be a very convenient way of finding up-to-the-minute data quickly and easily; however, it can also present difficulties for researchers, as it is not edited (as newspapers and magazines are). Anyone with the knowledge and access to a server can publish anything. As a result, it’s difficult to know whether your sources are reliable. Ideally, of course, the Internet should be used in conjunction with more traditional resources like journals and newspapers. (You should generally use as many types of reliable sources as possible in your research.) For this exercise, you will be searching for information on the Internet (preferably about a topic you’re working on in this or another class) and reporting on the search and the results. Your purpose in reporting on your search will be to recommend to your audience, which should be another student or even a professor in your field, whether or not she or he should use the Internet as a source for research. If so, how can she or he use the Internet most effectively for researching in your field? If not, why not?
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Online
#14281
One of the best ways to practice writing memos, of course, is to get a job and write lots of memos to actual audiences, but practicing can certainly help. This computer file contains a memo that needs to be revised. In the current version, the main points are difficult to locate, and the supporting details aren’t well organized. You will work to improve this memo to make it work more effectively with its audience.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#14267
Revising Documents for Different Audiences
In the most effective documents, the data is presented in the way most appropriate for the readers. It matches their expectations for the document, their purposes for reading, and their level of technical expertise. When professionals create documents, they must be mainly concerned with the primary reader. To ensure that you are thinking about your readers, it is often useful to create a reader profile, identifying their key characteristics. This profile allows you to shape the material into a more reader-friendly document. During this exercise, you are going to create an information sheet about melanoma. This exercise has two major stages. First you will complete an audience analysis worksheet by answering questions about your primary audience. Then you will revise text about melanoma of the skin, creating a one-page information sheet that could be distributed to students at a campus science exhibition.
Burnett, Rebecca E. Thomson (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#10039
The Rhetoric of the Challenger Disaster: A Case Study for Technical and Professional Communication 
This site aims to provide a resource for applying rhetorical principles to a case study in technical and professional communication. This pedagogical tool will facilitate student learning by offering a concrete example that shows us what is at stake when we fail to acknowledge the rhetorical dimensions of science and organizational communication.
Lawless, Amy. ATTW (2000). Academic>Course Materials
#10151
Rubrics and Evaluation Resources
Midlink's rubrics site offers documents about educational technique.
North Carolina State University (1998). Academic>Course Materials
#10150
How often have you attempted to grade your students' work only to find that the assessment criteria were vague and the performance behavior was overly subjective? Would you be able to justify the assessment or grade if you had to defend it? The Rubric is an authentic assessment tool which is particularly useful in assessing criteria which are complex and subjective.
Pickett, Nancy and Bernie Dodge. San Diego State University (1998). Academic>Course Materials
#22279
A PDF document intended as a resource for teachers who want help describing the memo to students. This (relatively lengthy) sample memo attempts to make an all-too-familiar document strange again by explaining what it is and how to use it.
Zuidema, Leah A. Michigan State University (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Writing>Technical Writing
#14305
Sample Oral Presentation Evaluation Form 
A form for evaluating presentations.
Markel, Mike. Bedford-St. Martin's (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Assessment
#14332
Problems involving sentence-style cause writing to be unclear, wordy, unemphatic, and difficult to read. But sentences with these kinds of style problems are not necessarily grammatically incorrect—--nor do they violate any of the commonly accepted standards of usage. Yes, perfectly wretched, unreadable writing can be perfectly error-free! Federal, state, and local government—as well as academicians and lawyers in general—have long been the primary resource for wordy, pompous, and just plain bad writing. However, with the Plain English Movement, William Clinton's 1998 Presidential Memorandum on Plain Language, and similar events in state and local governments— government writing is becoming less and less an easy target. This chapter reviews some of the most common sentence-style problems, showing how to recognize them and how to fix them. Surely many others exist —we've just not trapped and labeled them yet. But in the wilds of bad writing, being able to recognize and revise sentence-style problems covered in this chapter will take you a long way—and enable you to recognize other types of problems as well.
McMurrey, David A. Illuminati Online (2001). Academic>Course Materials>Style Guides>Minimalism
#10787
Students often misinterpret the objective: 'learn how to improve writing skills' that is found among the many objectives of the C471 course. We do not have a major writing assignment in this course, nor do we critique your writing skills. On the other hand, we do introduce you to many tools that will assist in the task of writing. One of the most important things to grasp in this session is the conventions used in formal science writing, such as the use of abbreviations for journal titles and the frequent omission of article titles from the citations. The terms 'citation' and 'reference' are used in several contexts in C471. In this session, they refer to items of a bibliography.
#24157
Slides to Teach Scientific Presentations
Given here are free PowerPoint slides from The Craft of Scientific Presentations (Springer, 2003). These slides have been requested by more than 200 instructors around the world.
Alley, Michael. Virginia Tech (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Presentations>Scientific Communication
#24156
Slides to Teach Technical Writing
Given on this site are free PowerPoint slides to teach technical writing. These slides come from The Craft of Scientific Writing (3rd ed., Springer, 1996). More than 400 instructors around the world have requested these slides.
Alley, Michael. Virginia Tech (2002). Academic>Course Materials>Writing>Technical Writing
#18932
Start a Simulated Consulting Firm
Your group of three to four students plans to start a technical communications consulting agency. Each of you should read one of the articles found under the heading 'Getting Started in the Profession' and 'Professional Associations' (in the Web Destinations section). Take and compare notes, then collaboratively write a two to three page proposal aimed at securing a business start-up loan from your local bank. Make sure you address your business's goals, marketing strategies, and services offered. All of this information should be based on your readings. To look at some short model proposals, go to the Models and Templates section of this Web site.
Lannon, John M. Pearson Education. Academic>Course Materials>Consulting
#25038
Teaching Technical Communication
Course materials and teaching suggestions for the Technical Communication classroom (as taught at New Jersey Institute of Technology); website contains current assessment criteria and goals.
Johnson, Carol Siri. New Jersey Institute of Technology (2003). Academic>Course Materials>Writing>Technical Writing
#13538
Teaching the Proposal in the Professional Writing Course 
Professional writing instructors and their colleagues spend a good deal of time writing, conceiving, or living off the fruits of proposals. They depend on proposals for released time, research funds, conference reimbursement, and in some cases, a significant part of their livelihoods. What they may fail to realize is that their students also live and work in proposal-heavy worlds at work, in school, or within the context of hobbies and interests. Of course, most college students do not see themselves as writers. They are not comfortable with their own writing; consequently, they do not understand the importance and power of proposals until they are given the opportunity to explore the form and its utility in their lives.
Wahlstrom, Ralph. Technical Communication Online (2002). Academic>Course Materials
#14040
Tech Comm Course Materials from CS5014
A small collection of course materials from a 1995 computer science course.
Abrams, Marc. Virginia Tech (1995). Academic>Course Materials>TC
#29948
Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century
The online companion to the textbook Technical Communication in The Twenty-First Century.
Dobrin, Sidney I., Christopher J. Keller and Christian R. Weisser. TCTC. Academic>Course Materials>Textbooks
#14972
Technical Communication Skills: Lecture Slides
There is more to the lectures than the basic points printed on these OHP slides. They are not a substitute for being present, paying attention, taking notes, and you know I'm right.
Whitby, Blay. University of Sussex (2000). Academic>Course Materials>Presentations
#14447
Technical Communication Textbooks: An Opinionated Guide
This guide is intended to help teachers select a textbook for the English 314 (Technical Writing) course. Please note that the statements in the following table represent the opinions of English 314 teachers. Some features listed as advantages by other teachers may seem like disadvantages to you, and vice versa.
Smith Taylor, Summer. Clemson University (1999). Academic>Course Materials
#20511
These documents are suitable for take-home, graded assignments or in-class workshops. As whole documents created in the 'real world,' they complement the sentence- and paragraph-level editing tasks in the textbook Technical Editing.
Rude, Carolyn D. Allyn and Bacon (1998). Academic>Course Materials>Editing
#22188
Technical Editing: Discussion and Application Materials
Assignments to complement Carolyn Rude's Technical Editing textbook. Instructors can load the materials onto a server or student disks so that the students can respond at the computer.
Rude, Carolyn D. Allyn and Bacon (1998). Academic>Course Materials>Technical Editing
