Technical Writing Textbook

I’ve selected the textbook for my hybrid technical writing class this fall at Red Rocks. It’s a new book published by Pearson-Prentice Hall. The title is Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century, and it was written by Sidney I. Dobrin, Christopher J. Keller, and Christian R. Weisser.

Humanities Class for Fall

As of Thursday, I’m scheduled to teach a humanities class at Red Rocks this fall:

HUM 121, Survey of Humanities I–Introduces students to the history of ideas that have defined cultures through a study of the visual arts, literature, drama, music, and philosophy. It emphasizes connections among the arts, values, and diverse cultures, including European and non-European, from the Ancient world to 1000 C.E.

The textbook for the course is Vol. I of The Humanistic Tradition (fth ed.) by Gloria K. Fiero. It’s published by McGraw Hill.

Textbook for Developmental Classes

I’ve decided to use the newest edition of Sentences, Paragraphs, and Beyond for my developmental classes this summer and fall. I have to have my book order for the summer semester in tomorrow, and I’m waiting to hear back what the ISBN would be to include the access code for Houghton Mifflin’s WriteSpace with the textbook. I hope I get it in time. If not, it’s my own fault for waiting so long to contact the publisher.

Classes I’ll Be Teaching

During the March term at Westwood’s Denver South campus, I’ll be teaching HUM 400, Creative and Critical Thinking. I’ve taught the course on campus before, but never online or in a hybrid format, as I will be this time. When I’ve taught the class in the past, I’ve selected a controversial topic for the class to examine and then required each student to follow the process on his/her own and write a paper about it. I’m thinking of using global warming as the topic this coming term.

I like to show 12 Angry Men (the original black-and-white movie, not a remake) in classes when we discuss critical thinking.

For Red Rocks, I’m currently scheduled to teach one section each of ENG 030 and 060 (developmental classes) this summer and one each of ENG 030 and 131 this fall. The section of ENG 131, Technical Writing I, will be hybrid, which will be an interesting experience. I developed and taught a technical writing class for Westwood College Online in addition to teaching it “on ground.”

The Red Rocks English Department (along with some others) had a book fair on Friday where faculty could exam publishers’ offerings. Choosing textbooks will be hard because there are so many options.

Just for future reference, I’m going to include the course descriptions for the Red Rocks classes here. I got them from the Colorado Community College Common Courses page.

ENG 030, Basic Writing Skills–Focuses on sentence and basic paragraph structure and development. Enables the student to review and improve grammar, usage, and punctuation skills while employing critical thinking strategies and the writing process to respond to a wide variety of writing situations.

ENG 060, Writing Fundamentals–Focuses on paragraph structure and development and introduces the formal essay. Enables the student to review and improve grammar, usage, and punctuation skills while employing critical thinking strategies and the writing process to respond to a wide variety of writing situations.

ENG 131, Technical Writing I–Develops skills one can apply to a variety of technical documents. Focuses on principles for organizing, writing, and revising clear, readable documents for industry, business, and government.

Technical Writing Textbook

When I taught technical writing for Westwood College, we used Technical Report Writing Today by Riordan (Houghton Mifflin), and others for earlier editions. I liked the book, but when I needed to select a book for my class at Red Rocks, I picked Technical Communication (8th ed.) by Mike Markel (Bedford/St. Martin’s). I’m beginning to regret that decision.

First, I don’t care for Markel’s definition of technical communication as “workplace communication” There’s a lot more to it than that.

Second, when he presents the writing process, he treats technical documents the same as any writing assignment the students would do for a class. He leaves out considerations of budget, deadlines, publication, distribution, etc.

I didn’t care too much for Riordan’s definition either, but he did a good job of covering the writing process as it occurs in the workplace.

In Riordan’s last edition (9th), the page layout was changed so there are wide outside margins. I didn’t care for that or the effort to expand the textbook to cover technical “communication” instead of technical writing despite the title. I also don’t agree with his assertion in the first chapter (an addition to the latest edition) that “technical writing is global.” I also wish he had a chapter on fliers, brochures, and similar documents.

However, I may go back to his book the next time I teach the class.