Coordinator: Simon BOYNTON
Course Description:
This one-semester, 6-credit communication course is for final-year students majoring in Computer Science / Computing and Data Analytics / Financial Technology [BASc(FinTech)]. The focus of this course is on helping students to report on the progress of their Final Year or Capstone Project in an effective, professional manner in both written and oral communication. Topics include accessing, abstracting, analyzing, organizing and summarizing information; making effective grammatical and lexical choices; technical report writing; and technical presentations. Assessment is wholly by coursework.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the course, students should be able to:
- Write a report that explains technical information to specialist and non-specialist audiences in a succinct, organized manner
- Produce a summary that captures the essence of a report for a non-specialist audience
- Present technical information through selecting appropriate graphics and integrating them well into the text
- Make convincing justifications and claims based on real-life disciplinary sources
- Deliver technical information in an oral presentation to a non-specialist audience which demonstrates accurate use of language and a grasp of appropriate presentation techniques
Strategies:
- Videotaping of oral presentations is conducted to add a critical element of tension and to facilitate performance improvements through self-reflection.
- In most cases, students are asked to target a non-specialist audience, or a combination of specialist and non-specialist audience whose communication needs and limitations must be accommodated through the choice of content, vocabulary and register.
- Students are required to attend compulsory rehearsal(s) and workshop(s) to gain feedback from the teacher and peers for improvement before the assessments.
- Assigned readings and tasks are set for out-of-class and independent learning
Assessment Methods:
(with breakdown of percentage weighting of the various methods)
- Project reports (55%)
- Oral Presentations (35%)
- Independent learning work (10%)