#29331
Rethinking the Design of Presentation Slides
Recently, much criticism has arisen about the design of slides created with Microsoft PowerPoint. This web page challenges PowerPoint's default design of a single word or short phrase headline supported by a bullet list. Rather than subscribing to Microsoft's topic-subtopic design for slides, this web page advocates an assertion-evidence design, which serves presentations that have the purpose of informing and persuading audiences about technical content.
Alley, Michael. Virginia Tech (2004). Articles>Presentations>Information Design>Microsoft PowerPoint
#28770
Scientific and Technical Communication: Theory, Practice, and Policy (Digital Edition)
Scientific and technical communication can be defined as a process of gathering, organizing, presenting and refining information. It is also a process of persuasion which often appeals to objectivity to convince an audience. Finally, it is a process inevitably shaped by its contexts, and which is improved when it recognizes its contexts.
Collier, James H. and David M. Toomey. Virginia Tech (1997). Books>Scientific Communication>TC
#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
#14042
Teaching Professional Writing--Bridging Theory and Practice 
Technical and professional communication is a growing field, and there is a need for teachers and trainers at all levels (e.g., high school, college, and business/corporate settings). My goal is to prepare you to meet that need. In this course, you'll learn about professional writing and develop strategies to be a more effective teacher of writing through a hands-on apprenticeship and classroom practice. You'll be exposed to several classroom settings, and you'll learn to design and test assignments. In addition, we'll talk about ways to connect strategies for teaching professional writing to strategies in related fields such as composition, corporate training, and instructional design. Finally, we will study the recent history of the field to better understand current issues: the essential ones of audience, purpose, and exigency, as well as document design, ethics, the rhetoric of science and technology, and the relationships among technology, corporate culture, and professional communication.
Dubinsky, Jim. Virginia Tech (2001). Academic>Courses>Graduate>Business Communication
#14966
Teaching Technical Writing: The Möbius Loop of Theory and Practice
In this course you will build a pedagogical and theoretical foundation for teaching an introductory technical writing course in a community college, university, or industry setting. You will learn by means of extensive readings, writing, collaborative activities, classroom observations, interviews, and conversation ('teacher talk').
Dubinsky, Jim. Virginia Tech (1999). Academic>Courses>Graduate
#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
#22585
Using Distiller to Build Booklets 
Adobe InDesign and Adobe PageMaker include utilities that create booklets using a simple page imposition routine. However, other applications such as Adobe FrameMaker or Microsoft Word do not have these utilities and leave users with a bit of a dilemma when they want booklets made. Using Adobe Acrobat Distiller and a simple PostScript file (sig.ps), you can create booklets from EPS (encapsulated PostScript) pages printed from your application. The PostScript file takes the EPS files and arranges them on pages in a single PDF document. This technical guide briefly explains impositions and signatures and provides instructions for editing the associated sig.ps PostScript file used to create a booklet. Knowledge of PostScript may be helpful but is not absolutely necessary; you need only to make a few clearly explained edits for the sig.ps file to work with any documents you have.
Virginia Tech. Design>Document Design>Software>Adobe Acrobat
#18812
Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science Students
These guidelines are designed to help you, the engineering or science student, perform technical writing assignments in your laboratory, design, and technical communication classes. In these guidelines, you will find discussions of several common documents in engineering writing and scientific writing. For these types of documents, you will find models written by other students.
Alley, Michael. Virginia Tech. Resources>Writing>Engineering
