This is a list of brief descriptions of selected courses I have taught in technical communication, user-centered design, and the digital humanities. The full list of courses I’ve taught is on my CV.
Writing for the Technical Professional – Lower-level undergraduate course; taught five times for the general student population and four times for Honors students. This introductory technical communication course prepares students in technical professions or professional fields for the types of research, writing, and information presentation they will be doing in their careers. The course philosophy holds that writing has many purposes and uses beyond just relaying information, and even in the most concrete of professions the facts do not “speak for themselves.” Students’ main task is to learn to articulate, explain, and interpret the information they are dealing with to multiple audiences and in multiple communication contexts.
Visual Technical Communication – Upper-level undergraduate course; taught eight times. Focuses on visual technical communication in the form of charts, tables, and diagrams, as well as full-page informational graphics that blend text and visuals to tell data-based stories. We focus on visual design principles and practice using tools to produce graphics, beginning with an introduction to graphic design and practice producing effective graphics that complement the text elements of documents. Students then study persuasive aspects of visual design and learn to develop information graphics that inform or persuade audiences about technical or scientific topics. The course concludes with a project in which students will plan, research, and create a full-page informational graphic on a technical or scientific topic of their choice. (A separate MA-level course takes a similar applied approach but includes more extensive consideration of design and critical theories.)
Documentation and the Collaborative Process – Upper-level undergraduate course; taught nine times. Focuses on developing and practicing strategies for collaborative writing work. The class as a group develops a book-length project from idea to final published product: a style guide for the needs of university student, staff, and professional technical communicators. Students are divided into small teams focused on specific research, writing, and editorial tasks.
User-Centered Design for Technical Communication – Master’s-level course; taught once. An introduction to user-centered design for MA students, oriented toward practical methods for approaching a design problem in technical communication. It takes a broad view of design problems, including software applications, websites, community development, architecture, and wayfinding. Students first develop an appreciation for the theory and philosophy of UCD as it pertains to technical communication, develop skills in using and applying usability methods that are appropriate for UCD, and improve individual and collaborative skills in design-based problem solving. It involves a UCD project that addresses a problem for an external client.
Narrative Information Visualization – PhD-level course; taught five times. Narrative information visualizations–visual stories about data–engage audiences and tell a story using features like interactive maps, informational graphics, and timelines. Visualization designers make choices about selecting and representing data, developing a narrative, and shaping their audiences’ interpretation of the underlying information. Students interested in research in digital humanities, visual communication, science communication, and/or digital history begin by exploring theories of cognitive science, critical theory, graphic design, and rhetoric as they apply to information visualization. They then work with text, visuals, numerical data, and/or map-based data to develop an interactive visualization project.
Research Methods for Texts and Technology – PhD-level course; taught four times. This course prepares students in the PhD in Texts and Technology Program to design, conduct, and critique interdisciplinary humanities research that focuses on textual technologies. We study a range of issues related to theory, method, and evidence as they relate to project- or problem-based research. As students position themselves as scholars of specific textual or technological artifacts, we examine research that focuses on three different stages in the project lifecycle: project development as research, the analysis of existing artifacts, and understanding how audiences receive and use texts and technologies. Our focus is on empirical research, including qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods approaches.