Fall 2011 Course Descriptions
COMP 150-04 The Engineering Method of Technical Writing
This course is for graduate and undergraduate students who want to improve their technical writing or who want to learn to write more easily. The course is a full-year, half-credit course, which means that it meets only once per week, and over the course of the year you will earn one full credit.
The workload is expected to start at 4–5 hours per week; as your skills improve, the workload should decline steadily. Grades will be based on in-class exercises and on a portfolio of work done outside of class. I believe that grades will be pass/fail only.
The syllabus and methods for the course are explained at length in my short monograph Learning Technical Writing Using the Engineering Method (http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/pubs/learn.pdf). The books by Williams and Boice will be required.
Prerequisite: This course involves small-group instruction and enrollment is limited; to take the course you must have the consent of the instructor. To obtain the instructor's consent, send a short statement of why you are interested in the course and what you hope to get out of it, accompanied by a one-page sample of something you have written on a technical topic.