Because the successful internship project requires the student to work independently and professionally in a communication related on-the-job experience, the student must have completed TCC and other course work that will contribute to an advanced proficiency in writing, editing, oral presentations, and overall sophistication in the use of language.

Special courses offered in the TCC curriculum also provide training in editing, web design, electronic publishing, and specific skills such as the design of documentation and user manuals. The TCC Internship is the “capstone” experience for advanced TCC students; therefore, students should be well prepared.

No textbook is used in EPD398. However, the “TCC Internship Handbook” provides overall guidance for the internship project and for the internship portfolio, which documents the student's work effort with a record of work and examples of completed projects.

Special materials on language, workplace issues, and ethics are provided for class discussions.

OUT OF CLASS: Portfolio preparation and completion: Conferences are scheduled with the course Instructor to discuss the Internship Project and the final portfolio. These meetings permit planning, reviewing, and final production of the Internship Project Portfolio.

IN CLASS: Discussion and review of language and workplace issues relating to the profession of technical communication: EPD 398 is the course component of the Technical Communication Certificate Internship. The class provides an opportunity to discuss workplace issues in general and specific matters relating to each participant's Internship Project.

Refer also to the current version of the “TCC Internship Handbook” available online on the EPD398 course website.

Brief discussions are presented by class participants on a number of topics relevant to workplace issues, language, and the internship portfolio:

WORKPLACE and PROFESSIONAL ISSUES: Interpersonal skills and professional relationships; Feedback processes, active listening, handling criticism, communication styles; Time management, project management; meeting deadlines; Planning the communication process and delivering a product; Teamwork, leadership skills, and meeting management; Multimedia, quality improvement methods, interviewing for information; Ethics in the workplace.

LANGUAGE and COMMUNICATION: Technical communication as a profession; Professional societies (STC, IEEE Professional Communication); Continuing professional development opportunities; Marketing communication skills; Writing/document design/media issues; Client/co-worker/employer issues; Language issues: history, usage, controversies, world languages; Technical Communication tools: books, online resources, etc.; Ethics of communication.

TCC INTERNSHIP PORTFOLIO COMPLETION: Purpose, plan, and design of internship document; special media; Organization, content, evaluation of accomplishments; Practical concerns for real projects; Peer review and discussion of portfolio drafts.

EPD398 meets once each alternate week during the semester; classes are 50-minute sessions. Students meet out of class for instructor conferences.

The following statement indicates which of the following considerations are included in this course: economic, environmental, ethical, political, societal, health and safety, manufacturability, sustainability.

Student internship projects demonstrate the value of communication in a wide variety of applications:

Economic - reducing the cost of errors and misunderstanding through improved communication

Environmental - avoiding inefficiencies in wasted time and materials due to bad communication

Ethical - analyzing the ethics of communication in the codes of the NSPE and the STC

Political - understanding the politics of world languages, official languages, changing languages, and vanishing languages

Societal - recognizing the impact of dialect, levels of usage, and the challenges of inclusiveness in communication

Health and safety - seeing the ways that poor communication can lead to safety and liability issues

Manufacturability - linking design and product, process and production through tools such as floor requirements, ISO documents, and QA methodologies

Sustainability - fostering effective problem analysis, planning for meeting technological change, and strategizing for new social and economic conditions using communication

The Technical Communication Certificate program serves engineering students who want to add a special and highly valued set of skills to their engineering degrees. Increasingly, engineers are routinely required to be able to demonstrate excellent communication skills; as an engineer's on-the-job responsibilities increase, so also does the level of communication work required. The TCC is open to all students at UW; and students also participate in the program from liberal arts, sciences, and other programs at UW-Madison. These students gain useful and rigorous communication training that serves a variety of majors.

EPD398, as the “capstone” project for the TCC, provides a practical real-world experience. The internship positions, which are matched as well as possible to the interests and skills of the students, provide valuable experience which can be used in future employment; and, in some cases, the internship positions lead to full-time jobs in the communication field.