English 301 is a technical writing course for students from many different disciplines and has vast usefulness in our futures. Also important to note is that it is strategically offered as a distance education course online. This is an important distinction as much of what the technical and professional writing that occurs nowadays is in online forms. Students will be learning and practicing their writing and writing techniques in various types such as composing proposals, reports, applications and emails as well professional communication between co-workers, management or even customers. On top of the writing aspects of the course there is also a focus on building an online portfolio and presence in the form of professional social media and job applications.

The course also puts effort into collaborative practices that would be commonplace in most professional occupations that would also benefit from the technical writing skills learned. Students are expected to participate, peer review and discuss using their collective minds to further everyone’s potential.

In taking this course I hope to bolster my communication skills, especially in terms of written communication and technical write-ups that will likely be extremely common in my future career in technology. Given the nature of my work specification documents, requirements analysis documents, and post-mortem discussions are often extremely specialized as well as all the forms of communications that go along with them, so I hope in my efforts I’m able to prepare myself and learn some tools and techniques to handle these with ease in a real job and a professional environment.