Technical Communication Skills Report Exercise
Task
Imagine you have been leading a team that is engaged in an evaluation of a major sotfware utility for Institut Teknologi Brunei. You must now prepare a report for the Head of the ECE department. You may imagine that this is a real company (such as IBM or Microsoft), if that makes you feel more comfortable. The important factor is to imagine that this is a technical report for the Head of ECE Department of Institut Teknologi Brunei.
This report is required to enable them to take a technically informed decision on whether or not to replace this utility or to spend money on updating or developing it. You are concerned only with the technical side of this process. The relevant commercial and financial considerations will be dealt with in other reports to the board. What the board require from you is a clear technical overview of this particular piece of software. This should focus on its technical strengths and weaknesses.
The purpose of the exercise is to learn and refine the ability to prepare technical reports, so the form of the report is much more important than its content. You should pick a feature of Windows, Macos, Linux, or some other piece of software, with which you are already familiar and not waste time researching it, except perhaps for checking references. You will not be marked on technical accuracy and should aim instead for high standards of clarity and coherence. You may conclude in favour of, or against, future company involvement with the product as you please. What matters is that your conclusions are justified in the report.
The report should be as close as possible to 1500 words in length.
Some suggested topics are:
MAN Powerpoint Outllook Mulberry Wordperfect X-BIFF MSWord PINE, ELM Firefox Excel Internet Explorer Emacs Netscape and so on...
You may add your own suggestions, but get approval from me if there is any doubt about suitability.
Submission
A draft version of the entire report should be handed in by all students on or before 25th October 2008 (sat). The draft need not be complete or polished, but must at least show the intended structure of the report. This should include the intended title and sub-title, if any, the sections, and any notes on their likely contents. I will correct and return any text, but you will not lose marks for any mistakes or indeed for the complete absence of text. The marks for the draft are for structure (no surprises there, I hope).
The point of this exercise is to enable me to correct any major misunderstandings before you have to submit the final version of the report!
The final polished and neatly bound version of the report should be handed in by the 15th November 2008 (sat)
All these documents should be handed in to my office Room 2F.69 before 1630 (4.30pm) on the required date. It's perfectly acceptable to submit before these dates. If there any changes to these arrangements you will be informed by either (probably both) me and the department office in good time.
Imagine you have been leading a team that is engaged in an evaluation of a major sotfware utility for Institut Teknologi Brunei. You must now prepare a report for the Head of the ECE department. You may imagine that this is a real company (such as IBM or Microsoft), if that makes you feel more comfortable. The important factor is to imagine that this is a technical report for the Head of ECE Department of Institut Teknologi Brunei.
This report is required to enable them to take a technically informed decision on whether or not to replace this utility or to spend money on updating or developing it. You are concerned only with the technical side of this process. The relevant commercial and financial considerations will be dealt with in other reports to the board. What the board require from you is a clear technical overview of this particular piece of software. This should focus on its technical strengths and weaknesses.
The purpose of the exercise is to learn and refine the ability to prepare technical reports, so the form of the report is much more important than its content. You should pick a feature of Windows, Macos, Linux, or some other piece of software, with which you are already familiar and not waste time researching it, except perhaps for checking references. You will not be marked on technical accuracy and should aim instead for high standards of clarity and coherence. You may conclude in favour of, or against, future company involvement with the product as you please. What matters is that your conclusions are justified in the report.
The report should be as close as possible to 1500 words in length.
Some suggested topics are:
MAN Powerpoint Outllook Mulberry Wordperfect X-BIFF MSWord PINE, ELM Firefox Excel Internet Explorer Emacs Netscape and so on...
You may add your own suggestions, but get approval from me if there is any doubt about suitability.
Submission
A draft version of the entire report should be handed in by all students on or before 25th October 2008 (sat). The draft need not be complete or polished, but must at least show the intended structure of the report. This should include the intended title and sub-title, if any, the sections, and any notes on their likely contents. I will correct and return any text, but you will not lose marks for any mistakes or indeed for the complete absence of text. The marks for the draft are for structure (no surprises there, I hope).
The point of this exercise is to enable me to correct any major misunderstandings before you have to submit the final version of the report!
The final polished and neatly bound version of the report should be handed in by the 15th November 2008 (sat)
All these documents should be handed in to my office Room 2F.69 before 1630 (4.30pm) on the required date. It's perfectly acceptable to submit before these dates. If there any changes to these arrangements you will be informed by either (probably both) me and the department office in good time.
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