All About STC’s Education Program.
By Craig Baehr | Fellow
Professional training is key to building a successful career and skill set, whether on-the-job or through formal education. To support your professional development needs, STC’s Education Program offers a wide range of training courses and webinars, from beginner to advanced levels, on topics of interest to practicing (and future) technical communicators. Whether you’re looking to expand on education and training received from colleges, universities, or technical schools, STC’s professional courses and webinars are also a great way to expand your skills, or learn new ones, which support your professional goals.
Professional training courses often provide practical skills and takeaways, which support your existing knowledge, skills, and abilities, often in hands-on settings. STC’s training courses and webinars can help you build and improve your technical knowledge, acclimate to new skill sets when changing jobs and professions, prepare for professional certification examinations, and help orient you to new skills in the technical communication profession.
Professional Online Training Courses
STC’s online courses allow learners to explore a subject in depth over the course of several weeks, through guided instruction from an experienced instructor, and to exchange knowledge with the other participants. These courses feature a breadth of topics on technical communication subjects with practical knowledge takeaways. Courses are open to members and non-members and all skill levels; however, advanced topics may have specific prerequisites. A typical course meets once per week for 60-90 minutes over several weeks, however some courses are offered in shorter durations, such as 1-3 sessions. While many courses are delivered synchronously, some can be delivered asynchronously or as hybrid combinations. As such, these courses offer participants a wide range of topics, modalities, and scheduling options.
STC also rotates its popular and core course offerings each year, providing multiple opportunities to take courses on topics such as the Tech Comm Fundamentals, Designing for Non-Designers, Instructional Design, Professional Certification Exam Preparation, Technical Editing, So You Wanna Be a Technical Communicator, User Experience, and others. Additionally, new course and webinar topics are added every year, following specialized topics of interest and new trends in technical communication, such as Accessibility, Content Strategy, Introduction to XML, Taxonomy Creation for Content Tagging, Video Production, and many others. After completing a course, participants earn a course completion certificate and can check their education report card record online for a list of completed courses.
Live and Recorded Webinars
On a monthly basis, STC also features and produces multiple live, one-hour, webinars on popular and trending technical communication topics, ranging from beginner to advanced levels. Recently featured topics have included How to Create Quality Content, Growing Your Career in Business Development, Producing Sustainable Release Documents in an Agile Environment, From Technical Writer to Instructional Designer, Using MadCap Flare for Content and Branding, and others. Many webinars are free and the recorded archives of select sessions are provided for members to download and experience asynchronously. And many popular topics featured as Webinars are developed and featured as online courses, if you are interested in more of a deep-dive on a particular topic.
What to Expect from STC Education
Both courses and webinars are delivered using established platforms such as GoTo Meeting and Zoom, for live synchronous sessions, and Moodle, an online Learning Management System (LMS), used to provide asynchronous content and interaction for learners. In addition, you can expect the following from STC educational offerings:
- Content created and delivered by expert practitioners.
- Relevant and useful technical communication topics.
- Asynchronous and synchronous delivery options.
- Expert advice and feedback on course assignments and projects.
- Quality instruction and useful takeaways to build your knowledge and skills.
- Topics that appeal to a wide range of expertise and skill levels.
- New and trending topics which relate to technical communication.
- Connect and network with subject matter experts, which include both students and instructors.
Visit the STC Education Program Web page at https://www.stc.org/education/ for descriptions, pricing, and the schedule of course and webinars, or email us with other specific questions at education@stc.org.