Collaboration software is transforming the way international businesses communicate in the global workforce. Technical communicators use synchronous and asynchronous communication technology to assign team roles and responsibilities, organize document production, plan documentation strategies, and develop tactical solutions to problems of production. To work effectively in these virtual environments, they require current theoretical knowledge in how to successfully negotiate difference in virtual spaces, how power manifests itself in these spaces, and how the tools they use to construct these spaces shape them in interested rather than neutral ways. Teaching technical communication online models the collaborative virtual workspaces that writing professionals currently inhabit. Online collaboration projects provide students with a familiar environment in which to hone their skills and self-reflexively examine their online participation by consulting archives of collaborative work sessions.

An online graduate certificate in International Scientific& Technical Communication (ISTC) would meet the needs of working professionals by providing them with a distance education opportunity to learn advanced theoretical and practical approaches to:

• Composing documents and other information products for local and global translation;
• Writing collaboratively online in increasingly more diverse virtual workspaces;
• Developing best practices for new online writing workspaces that are informed by current technical communication research.
  

This graduate certificate program reaches out to workplaces across the state of Ohio whose growing reliance on technology to enhance their productivity requires the expertise of technical communicators.

By affording continuing education opportunities to these working professionals, our certificate program will directly enhance the productivity of the industries in which they work.

Who should consider this certificate?

Technical workers who have an interest in acquiring a university graduate certificate to mark their advancement, and an international audience interested in exploring the unique offerings of a graduate technical writing curriculum that emphasizes international issues including how to deal with an increasingly global workplace.