WRITING FOR EMERGING WORKPLACES, TBA
A new kind of professional writing course is needed to address the ever-changing nature of the contemporary workplace in the fourth (digital) industrial revolution. Traditional professional writing courses would cover a fixed set of genres, in the expectation that students would enter the workplace and set about performing these genres for years to come. This course seeks to develop writing competencies to help young professionals enter dynamic workplaces that will constantly evolve. The course seeks to engage not just the workplace professionals already know, but also the future of work that our graduates might anticipate.
Distinctive features of this new course follow from this premise. Instead of simply helping students develop job search documents for a position that in earlier times might have earned them a golden watch, the students, with the guidance of the instructor, will draft three different “Odyssey Plans” that will help them think through the multiple ways in which they might pursue a professional passion or address a career-related issue they care deeply about. Instead of focusing on a fixed set of professional writing genres, we will help students understand the tension between stability and change in writing conventions and how to engage emerging genres. Instead of remaining in the fixed domain of a discipline, students will need to engage in ‘border-crossing’ activities, among disciplines and among audiences. Instead of focusing on fixed genres, one after the other, the course has students identify a future need or issue in a changing workplace and engage one of several genres appropriate to the audience and rhetorical situation in which they find themselves. Instead of presuming that the world of work is chiefly alphabetic, the course also places a special emphasis on graphics, multimedia composition, and data visualization and analysis. Instead of presuming a static paper resume, the course helps students understand how to craft and curate a digital professional identity. The course culminates in a revised and extended Odyssey Plan that can facilitate ‘wayfinding’ in their professional future, and that can help them rapidly prototype experiences to lend clarity to choices and to improve how we might recognize emerging career options. Throughout, the course emphasizes design thinking, problem (re)framing, and ongoing, rapid prototyping.
