So this spring I decided to go back to school and get another degree for a potential career change. Farted around with computers for awhile as a side hobby, decided to get the slip of paper that makes it official. These classes are pretty easy, I've done most of the stuff before. The stuff they teach you in college is pretty laughable as it doesn't pertain much to the real world (except for the technical stuff).
Here's an example. One of my current classes is a tech writing class. Supposed to teach the kids about stuff that they'll be doing in the real world and dumb down tech stuff to target not tech audiences: How to write a progress report to non tech superiors, how to do a PowerPoint presentation, how to write a business letter, how to write user manuals... stuff like that.
Part of this week's assignment summary:
Overview
Imagine you are the manager of a software development team working on new applications for your company, Optimum Way Development, Inc. Your team has just missed a major milestone in completing one of the applications and, because of this, the project is now behind schedule. You must communicate this issue to your director, who is traveling and unable to be accessed by a phone call or face-to-face meeting. You decide that the best method to reach the director in this situation is by email. The director is a business professional who does not have technical education or experience.
Prompt
For this activity, you will create an email to the director to communicate an issue with one of your projects based on the scenario presented in the Overview.
Guidelines for Submission
You will submit an email. The email must:
Be at least 350 to 750 words
Be submitted as a Word document or PDF
Completely address all of the requirements in the Prompt sectionI don't know about you but in my work history, if I wrote a 350-750 word e-mail to the non-tech director about the status of a project falling behind, I'm pretty sure he'd wouldn't get past the first few sentences before tossing it.
Then with his reply ask me WTF? Give me a 10 sentence cliff note on what is wrong, how you're going to fix it and when, what resources do you need to make it happen. I'll expect a weekly progress summary until you are back on schedule.
Poor kids, college is not really plugged into the real world.
Edited by user
6 years ago |
Reason: Not specified
