The fundamentals of technical writing | MUNI 2024
Learn the essentials of technical communication in IT in a semester-long course at the Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk university.
Disclaimer: This is a pilot version of the full semester course.
Course objectives:
- Give students an overview of the technical writing industry, acquire knowledge and skills that are required for a technical writer job role.
- Prepare students to work with technical writers if they are working as developers.
- Prepare students to write better documentation for their future projects.
- Train purposeful, minimalist writing and clear communication.
Highlights 2024:
- Focus on hands-on experience during the lectures (markup, Git, usability, AI)
- New final project to complete over 6 weeks, a real-life open-source project so that students could contribute to it with their documentation after being evaluated
- New content: Style guides, Markdown, publishing tools, large language models and generative tools, crowdsourced peer review, release cycle
- New experience: Contributing to an open-source project: what you write, matters! Following the complete release cycle (setting up a repo, writing a draft, interviewing subject matter experts, applying markup used for the upstream project, using style principles, conducting and applying peer review, finalizing project, presenting it, publishing).
For information about assesment, homework and grading, see Information for MUNI students - spring 2024
Lecture Overview
The lecture overview is only tentative.
1st lecture: Introduction to technical writing: 20th February 2024
- Organization and requirements, definition and purpose of technical writing, a day in the life of a technical writer, types of technical documentation and their specifics, target audience.
2nd lecture: Style I: 27th February 2024
- Comparison of writing styles, types of technical documentation, objectives of TW style: Accessibility, Readability, Searchability.
3rd lecture: Style II: 5th March 2024
- Minimalism, modularity and structure, user focus and information flow, writing for global audiences.
- Prerequisites for this lecture:
- Bring a laptop with working operating system to which you have access.
- Introduction to markup languages and text editors, creating and generating documentation using Markdown.
5th lecture: Style III: 19th March 2024
- Style guides: Why and how they are useful, various major style guides for technical writing (IBM, Microsoft, Google), comparison, common principles, applying them in practice.
- Bring a laptop with working internet connection so you can research TW Style Guides and complete in-class tasks.
- Prerequisites for this lecture:
- Introduction to version control system and Git, using Git command line and GitHub.
Part 2. Hard skills:
- Definition of hard skills in technical writing, why we need them, product knowledge, overview of the development cycle and the documentation’s place in it. Collaborating with product owners, engineers, QE, support teams, content strategy, release management, planning for tech writing, how to create technical content.
8th lecture: Usability: 9th April 2024
- Real-life usability of documented products, designing user experience, 10 usability heuristics, practical applicability of documentation.
9th lecture: Soft skills: 16th April 2024
- Empathy, ethics, cultural awareness, communication skills, curiosity, proactivity, editorial skills, and time management.
- Usage of AI tools in technical documentation, recommendations, risks, and limitations of AI tools.
11th lecture: Crowdsourced peer review session: 30th April 2024
- Peer review session and broader concepts of technical writing.
12th lecture: Presentation of final project: 7th May 2024
- Presenting a project, documentation planning, release cycle, release notes, questions.