Writing for Classroom and Career

This course will help you with three kinds of writing you might do for any course—reports, evaluations, proposals. But this course is not just about “writing” or just about your work here at Rensselaer. This course will help you learn to communicate effectively—orally and in writing—in a wide range of situations, including situations that will be crucial to success in your professional career.

Goals

The primary goal of this course is to help you communicate in ways that actually get something to happen, influencing people’s actions, beliefs, and understanding. More specifically, the course is intended to improve your ability to:

  • Communicate with a variety of real audiences that will actually depend on and use what you have written
  • Achieve a variety of purposes (evaluating, recommending, etc.)
  • Incorporate visuals (graphs, visual images, page/screen design) into your writing and oral presentations
  • Make effective oral presentations
  • Assess your own work and the work of classmates

Course Text

Writing in a Visual Age, Lee Odell and Susan Katz, 2005.