Teaching Technical Communication – Unexpected Experience

1 Andrzej Krasniewski, Warsaw Univ. of Technology, Inst. of Telecommunications, Nowowiejska 15/19, 00-665 Warsaw, Poland, [email protected] Abstract  In 1998, a course on technical communication was introduced at the Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology, Warsaw University of Technology. Some of its characteristic features are: (a) the course has been developed and taught by a team of a university professor and a senior engineer from a marketing division of a large industrial company; (b) the lectures cover several non-traditional topics, such as "Internet as a source of information" and "legal and ethical aspects of technical writing"; (c) selfand peer-reviewing of student assignments is employed. Our observations indicate that some assumptions underlying the development of the course were incorrect. In particular, contrary to our expectations, the students have been much better technical speakers than technical writers. Based on such observations, several changes in the contents and organization of the course have been made.