Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Introduces the production of instructive, informative, and persuasive technical/professional documents aimed at well-defined and achievable outcomes. Focuses on presenting information using rhetorically appropriate style, design, vocabulary, structure, and visuals. Includes opportunities to gather, read, and analyze information and to learn a variety of strategies for producing accessible, usable, reader-centered deliverable documents that are clear, concise, and ethical. This course is part of Oregon Common Course Numbering. WR 227 and WR 227Z are equivalent. Prerequisites: WR 121, basic computer literacy, and intermediate word processing skills. Audit available.

Upon completion of the course students should be able to:

1. ADAPT: Apply key rhetorical concepts through analyzing, designing, composing, and revising a variety of deliverable documents for technical/professional contexts
2. CONNECT: Engage in project-based research, applying appropriate methods of inquiry for clearly defined purposes (e.g., user experience research and client/organization research)
3. ADAPT AND CONNECT: Collaborate with various stakeholders to develop and apply flexible and effective strategies for managing projects
4. INQUIRE: Develop and adapt document design and composition strategies to meet the demands of diverse clients, organizations, and multicultural audiences
5. REFLECT: Examine and respond to individual and professional ethical responsibilities across organizational contexts

Summer Course Detail

This course is an accelerated 8-week summer course that will cover the equivalent of a regular 10-week term. This will require a higher per-week time commitment from students to successfully complete the course. 

Contract Grading

This course uses a contract grading to evaluate student outcomes and assign final grades. Contract grading creates a less "confrontational" relationship between students and instructors, allowing the professor to assume a mentorship/advisory role, rewards students for high effort, and produces stronger student work by taking emphasis off points and percentages and focusing on learning new concepts and skills as the primary goal. 

About your instructor

Professor Mayes-Cottrell (he/they/o'ia) uses universal access/ADA-friendly course design and specializations in poetry and technical writing to help students write clearly and concisely. Raised in Hawai'i with an experience of deep poverty, Chris entered the teaching profession with a deeply anti-racist philosophy coupled with an anticolonial mindset. This is why the emphasis in class is always on learning and growth that allows students to safely make errors, revise, and recover so they can understand the skills they build in the context of future application. 

Textbook

Practical Modes for Technical Communication is a textbook that Chris assisted in authoring and editing. The book is organized in a way that best fits overall course organization and contains all the concepts and examples that fit each major project we'll do in class. Chris does not receive any royalties or economic benefit from using the book.