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An introduction to the study of multicultural language and linguistics with descriptive, psychological, social and semantic emphases.

The study of digital literacies, particularly their reciprocal relationships regarding rhetorical and socio-cognitive concerns for workplace, educational, and public lives. Students regularly explore digital literacies through scholarship, experiences with technology, and critical analyses. Students learn to speculate about consequences of choices or of ignoring digital literacies and what such decisions mean for their chosen areas of study or work.
 

Students will examine popular and scholarly publications and forums to see how they respond to and shape social media. They will collect artifacts such as news stories, screen shots, blogs, and listservs to demonstrate the feature changes of select social media and to develop timelines based on their findings.

This course prepares students with the necessary theories and skills for cross-cultural writings. Students learn important models and theories for understanding cultural differences, language differences at the semantic, syntactical, and textual levels, and common rhetorical patterns used in different cultures.

This course introduces students to theoretical approaches and rhetorical principles of communicating and writing that can be applied to any writing activity in the technical and scientific professions. The course includes an exploration of the role technology plays in enhancing and influencing writing and communicating and an examination of issues related to the practical writing expectations of professional communicators.

The editing, design, layout, and proofreading of a professional publication. This course is an internship.  May be repeated one time with a different emphasis. (approved topics*) This course may be taken twice if approved topics* are different.

In this course, we focus on the emergence of what is known as the discipline of "computers & writing," identifying its importance to English Studies. Within this investigation, we pay particular attention to textuality and what happens socially, politically, epistemologically, pragmatically, creatively, critically, and otherwise when "text" changes. Students will explore, speculate, and experiment with textuality and multiple media. 

One of the characteristics of technical communication is the use of high-tech to communicate technical information. Digital media are just such an example. The contents of the course include learning skills of creating audio/visual, animation files by using Dreamweaver, Flash, and other digital software, and applying design principles and rhetorical theory in Web design. 

You will learn core issues related to digital media writing, such as usability, captology, remediation, information architecture, networks and multimodality. You will learn specific tools and digital media writing practices and standards, such as those maintained by the W3C and others. We will emphasize informative content, theory-driven planning, and responsive design. 

This course mainly approaches discourse analysis from linguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. The purpose is to understand how forms of language are used in communication. The principal concern is to examine how any language produced by man, whether spoken or written, is used to communicate for a purpose in a context. In addition, we will understand how text reveals identities, feelings, and different social relationships. We will learn the specific ways to do social analysis, discourse analysis, text analysis, and conversational analysis.

This course focuses on ethical issues in the burgeoning and complex field of technical communication. We will study ethical philosophies, historical ethical cases, current ethical matters, and the scope of the ethical dilemmas in the field. 

This course will introduce students to methods of designing and conducting empirical research in technical communication/workplace settings. Topics will include usability testing and methods (surveys, interviews, think-aloud protocols, other forms of lab-based research), as well as case studies and workplace ethnographies.
 

In this course, students will learn to write scientific and medical journal articles and conference presentations from a medical writer perspective. This course is designed for technical communication majors and does not require any specialized scientific or medical knowledge. (However, students should have an interest in learning scientific and medical content so that they can write about it.)

The Technical Communication History course is about how technical communication history helps us understand the practices we do as technical communicators today, how to envision innovation, how to problem solve, and ways to enhance our communication effectiveness now and in the future. Ultimately, the purpose of the course is to make us better technical communicators.

This course prepares students to become information editors. Students will learn how reading research helps determine effective information editing, and they will develop expertise not only in conventional editing skills such as proper grammar, punctuation, and style but also in appropriate ways to present documents for readers. In addition, students will be introduced to FrameMaker, a software tool for creating online and paper documents.

This course is about using visual design as a practical communication tool in a wide range of forms such as paragraphs, tables, pictures, charts, maps, and icons. The course will cover a variety of medium such as paper documents, hypertext, and websites. Students will explore how the rhetorical contexts of a communication act determine what and which visuals are most effective. 

You will study and practice interpreting and incorporating medical findings and statistical results into clear, comprehensible and well-organized prose. You will learn to write scientific and medical journal articles, presentations, patient materials and other common forms of medical writing. You need no specialized scientific or medical knowledge; your interest in science or medical topics is essential. 

In this course, students will learn to create professional-quality digital videos as technical communicators. Students should expect to plan and write short, but well-developed, video scripts. Specifically, this course will cover the following phases of video writing and production: (1) planning informative and instructional videos, (2) scriptwriting and storyboarding, (3) directing, shooting, and filming, and (4) video editing and distribution (focusing on sharing the video on the Web).

This course prepares students with the necessary theories and skills for international technical communication. It mainly consists of three parts: understanding intercultural communication theories and cultural differences, internationalization and localization of technical information, and language translation theories and techniques with a focus on website localization.

The course offers students opportunities to practice applied health communication genres like charts, forms, health education materials, public health campaigns, grants, and government documents. A key element of the course is the integration of a service-learning component in which students work on "real" communication activities for a health care organization or facility in the area.  

This course will cover many aspects of project and information management for technical communicators, both those who work within large organizations as a part of a team of writers and those who work more or less independently as contract writers or consultants.  While this course will teach techniques and strategies for effective project management, it will also emphasize professional development and interpersonal aspects of project management.  

The course will engage students in searching for public and private funding sources and writing grant proposals for real-world funding needs. They will use print and electronic tools for identifying funding sources, preparing proposals, and making professional presentations.

This course will examine strategies technical communicators use to write and communicate effectively in times of risk and crisis. We will consider ways technical communicators analyze potentially crisis situations in an effort to inform and alert audiences. We will also explore how technical communicators capture the experiences of individuals in risky and crisis situations through documentation and other communication methods to ultimately improve communication for future uncertain, risky, and crisis times.

In this course students explore the process used to develop computer-related information, online and paper, for non-expert users/readers/viewers and learn how research informs that process. As students follow the document development process, they plan, write, develop, edit, and test their own documentation for software programs.

Students will be introduced to theories of technical communication that underpin effective pedagogy. We will also examine various approaches to teaching technical communication.
Goals: For students to learn key theories in technical communication and their application to teaching in this discipline and to become familiar with different approaches to teaching technical communication whether it is for community colleges, four-year universities, or graduate classes.

Technical Marketing Communication focuses on providing informative (or content-rich) and persuasive information about science and technology innovations to potential consumers. In this graduate seminar, we will: (1) cover the foundations and ethics of marketing technical products, (2) analyze the conventional genres of informative (content) marketing, and (3) examine the use of technology and new media in technical marketing.

This course explains how to plan, conduct, and analyze usability tests to understand the way users interact with different artifacts in order to improve products.The course covers concepts of usability research in the context of relevant literature, as well as best and new practices in the field. The course also offers hands-on learning experiences in Texas State University's Usability Research Laboratory. 

Because of the multidisciplinary nature of Technical Communication, a wide-range of publication opportunities exists including in academic journals, trade publications, popular magazines, on websites, and in e-publications. This Writing for Publication course will introduce students to the professional publication world and provide an opportunity for students to refine their written works to be submitted for publication. 

The course introduces students to technical communication theories and practices used to produce persuasive government documents. Students will engage in collaborative writing exercises that stimulate the invention processes used to create regulation preambles, regulations, legislative impact statements, responses to public comments, requests for rulemaking, board/council memorandums, advocacy group websites, and E-rulemaking websites.

This course examines the development and evolution  of rhetorical theory from the classical era to the twentieth century. The course provides a broad view of rhetorical theory, an historical perspective that encompasses how rhetoric has been defined and practiced, how its definitions and practices have been challenged and changed, and how it has influenced the fields of rhetoric and composition and technical communication. 

In this course, we will examine classical and modern rhetorical theories most relevant to technical communication as a discipline and as a set of practices. Emphasis will be placed on the dynamic, reciprocal nature of research, theory, and practice in technical communication—on the ways in which 1) research informs theory and practice and, 2) practice interrogates and shapes research and theory.