Time Commitment
The Graduate Certificate in Technical Writing and User Experience Design is built to be completed in a year's time. In the Fall and Spring semesters, you'll take a single course on a technical area in the certificate. In the fall, we'll focus on writing for online spaces. In the spring, we'll focus on print publication and traditional document design alongside editing. During the summer, we have a pair of writing-focused courses that introduce you to the concept of content strategy in technical writing while also providing you with an introduction to genre-specific writing demands, such as grants and proposals.
Semester Workload
Each course is asynchronous, so you'll never be required to log onto your computer a specific time to receive course materials or participate in assignments. Each course has a series of scaffolded major assignments that build into a final capstone project that you can then leverage in your job searches and elsewhere. During a given week you'll have regular readings with classroom discussions and feedback from peers via our learning management system and one-on-one feedback from your instructor from weekly reading responses. During weeks that we have major assignments due, you'll only have the classroom discussions and major assignment to help lighten the workload during those weeks.