Technical Writing: Grantham Review

This post is a review of what I learned in the Grantham Technical Writing Class.

Other posts in this series about Technical Writing can be found here:

https://questeroftruth.blogspot.com/p/technical-writing.html

I have been doing some form of Technical Writing for eight or nine years.  For various projects at my current job, I have written and revised Operation and Maintenance Manuals, created training documents for internal training, and worked on other project documents such as proposals, system evaluations, radio feasibility documents, and more.  So I was hoping that this class would help me fill in some of the gaps in my writing ability.  I have done a lot of writing other than Technical Writing, mostly academic, for example, for my History BA, I had to write a thesis, which ended up being roughly 90 pages. 

What did I learn in Grantham’s Technical Writing class?

Here are the main topics and projects covered in this course with comments about what a student can hope to learn in each. In some I felt like I got experience, but didn’t learn much other than getting exposed to a template that will hopefully be helpful in my career.

·         Memos

Memos are a formal communication to communicate particular information. They include some helpful meta data such as who sent the memo, who it was to, when it was sent, and what the subject is. They are useful for recording notes about a particular event, telling a group of people about a new policy or requirement, or formally telling someone else something.

·         Professional Presentation

During this part of the class, we covered how to present yourself professionally online and in a resume and cover letter.

·         Design

In this part of the class, we worked on marketing some idea, product, or service.  This part was, rightfully, more artistic. Going through the motions of creating a marketing pamphlet was helpful to me as it helped me develop some of the aesthetic aspects of marketing.  I have never thought much about how to design marketing materials; this class helped with that.

·         Presentation

During this week we had to present our marketing material project in a video.  We learned about different problems with video presentations, like using filler words. (I use too many, though I am usually better in person.)

·         Technical Instructions

 We learned about creating Technical Instructions, including that we ought to include the following:  Warnings, Parts needed, Instructions (step by step is best), and troubleshooting.

·         Main project: This main project was split into several smaller projects.

 Although this project was long, I thought it was a good use of student time and resources to learn how several document types relate to each other.

o   Problem statement

A problem statement is a small document that clearly defines and possibly describes the problem that is happening. This is the first stage in a larger project. At the end of the problem statement, there may be a list of possible solutions to the problem.

o   Feasibility reports

A feasibility or recommendation report examines a solution or multiple solutions and helps the customer to choose one of the solutions.

o   Proposal

A proposal tells the potential customer what problem you plan to fix, what you are planning to do, how you will do it, who will be on the team, and how much it will cost.

·         Blog

 Blogging is a way to convey many kinds of information to many people. It allows a permanent record of information to be put online somewhere that should be easy to find later.  For this project students will be writing a series of blog posts about Technical Writing.

What was good?

·         Templates for things that I already do.

Many of the document types that we covered were documents I have already used but not always in the same format.  It was helpful for me to see and use new templates, so that I can think about whether or not our templates at work might need changed or updated.

·         Practice with visual design for technical documents, especially in the Marketing Project.

 I enjoyed some of the visual design aspects of creating technical documents.  I do get a little of that at work, but not nearly as much as I got when doing the marketing project.

What did I not expect / what would I change?

This class was a newer format for the Technical Writing class.  I think it was the first time with this format.

·         No Textbook

I am probably not an average student; I have over 1500 books.  Probably at least two dozen or more are books I needed for college classes, and at least a dozen are college textbooks.  I know a lot of people don’t really want to have textbooks, especially large college textbooks, just lying around.  However, I find them very useful for reference material when I want to remember something that I was supposed to learn.  In today’s world of Amazon, and on demand printing, it should be pretty easy to have an ebook that also can be ordered as a print book, even if it gets revised after every class.  This could have both all the material covered in the class and additional material related to the class that professors think that students will find useful in future. A previous version of this class had an ebook, and I was enrolled in that version, but had move my start date to accommodate a busy schedule.

·         Too many video presentations

 Although I see why video presentations in this class could be helpful, I did not expect them in a Technical Writing class.  There is a speech class required for students, and in my opinion that is the place for video presentations.  Adding the video presentations, a personal-professional website, and a blog all to this course was too many requirements for using outside tools.  I think at least one of these should be eliminated.

·         Final project needs better definition.

Probably my biggest problem with the class, is the final project (yes, this one that my professor will be reading).  I have never had a class where the final exam or final project consisted of a question that amounted to “Tell me what you learned in this class.”  Yes, some of my classes asked me to show what I learned in the whole class, but the question was always well defined.  If I had an open-ended paper, it would still have some kind of a limit, like “tell me what you learned in 10 pages,” or “tell me what you learned about these three topics…”  Grantham requires that every assignment have a Rubric for grading, but the rubric for this assignment did not help at all either.  It is just vague about how much content is required.

All in all I am glad I took the class but would have appreciated a few changes to make it both more relevant and easier to take the knowledge with me.