Technical Writing Course

You're smart. You may be brilliant, but if you can't communicate what's in your head to others you may run into roadblocks and dead ends.

That's why technical writing has become one of OSU's most popular courses.

Now the semester-long course is available to you in a condensed and accelerated format.

What Is Technical Writing?

This technical writing course will give you an overview of the genre and prepare you to produce instructive, informational, and persuasive documents based on well-defined and achievable outcomes. Technical documents are precise, concise, organized, and based on complex information.

This online course will teach you processes for analyzing writing contexts and help you produce effective, clean, and reader-centered documents in an efficient manner. The purpose and target audience of a document determines the style that an author chooses. In this course, you will evaluate these stylistic choices and carefully consider document layout, vocabulary, sentence and paragraph structure, and visuals, among other factors.

Upon completion, you will gain an understanding and knowledge of many technical writing documents, including reports, feasibility studies, proposals, and specifications.

What You'll Learn

Use professional technical writing conventions of clean and clear design, style, and layout of written materials.
Create effective technical writing documents for end-users.
Write clearly, correctly, and concisely.
Produce clear, high-quality deliverables in a multitude of technical writing genres.
Gather and apply researched information that is appropriate to your field, as demonstrated by reading and analyzing documents, and citing sources correctly.
How to construct a logical outline of a technical document
How to write with awareness of expository techniques such as definition, classification, and causal analysis
How to design an effective format and layout for a technical publication

Time Commitment: You can plan on spending 3-8 hours of work per week.

Personalized Instructor Feedback

As a bonus, you'll get expert feedback on your chosen writing project. So if you have a tech startup proposal, for example, you can have it reviewed and critiqued before you submit to investors.

If you'd like to elevate your writing and all the benefits that come from writing advanced technical documents, you can get started right here.

Oregon State University College Partnership

This program is offered in partnership with the Oregon State University School of Writing, Literature, and Film in the College of Liberal Arts.

Additional Writing Programs

You might also be interested in our other writing programs:

Aug. 10 - Sep. 6, 2020

4 weeks

Online

$425

Request More Information

Additional Information: 1.6 CEUs | 16 PDUs

Download Technical Writing Syllabus

"Rich provided personalized feedback on each assignment, which I found invaluable. A lot of his comments and suggestions were on areas where I was a little unsure of my approach, and his insights on what would be best for the end-user were extremely helpful for me and my development as a technical writer."

Christy Carovillano

"I definitely feel more confident about technical writing after deciding to take this course. Technical writing is an important field of communication that should not be neglected by anyone wishing to broaden their skills in today's high-tech work place. The class is presented in a clear, straight-forward and professional manner. Kudos to Rich Collins for his ability to make a specialized field of writing accessible to anyone."

M. D. Blessing

Past Students' Work

Take a look at some recent projects our students have created.