Formatting and Designing Workplace Correspondence

Practice Writing 3: Formatting and Designing Workplace Correspondence

Format and design are equally important in professional correspondence as it encourages the audience to want to read, and it helps the audience navigate the document, helping them scan and easily locate information.

What is format and design?

Format and design are two aspects of a document you will need to address in every major assignment you complete in this course. This practice writing will help you better understand how to accomplish these goals. Every assignment will have a format you must follow such as memo, letter, email, etc…, and every assignment will need to include design features such as headings, subheadings, steps, lists, images, etc…

What do I need to do to complete this assignment?

Please look at the text below and put it in memo format. Then include design features for optimal readability; use what you learned from this week’s readings and videos to help you do this. For your reference, this text is taken from our course syllabus. While you may look at the syllabus as an example for format and design, please come up with your own headings and design features to format and design your memo.

You do not need to rewrite any of the text provided. You only need to add design and formatting features to make it easier to follow along. The memo is from you, and your audience is students enrolled in this course.

Submission Guidelines

After you have formatted and designed the text, save the changes, and submit to the assignment dropbox.

Text to Format and Design

This is a fully online course which means that all the course work will be conducted online. While the expectations for performance in an online course are the same as a traditional face to face course, an online course requires a degree of self-motivation, self-discipline, and technology skills that can make them more demanding for some students. You will need intermediate computer skills and a computer with internet access to be able to engage in this course, and you must be able to work independently and manage your time with some guidance. This course will introduce you to the expectations of writing in the professional workplace and help you explore the ways in which technology and media help shape professional communication. You will further develop your verbal and written communication skills by learning about how to address different audiences, using various persuasion strategies to connect with specific audiences, making ethical workplace decisions, using transformative leadership skills to lead and guide others to accomplish a common goal in a collaborative work environment, and using reflection to learn from your leadership experiences. The goal is to become a more effective communicator while leading and motivating others to use good judgment and make sound decisions that yield meaningful results. To help you accomplish these goals, you will be introduced to the concept of transformative leadership, a leadership style which includes the following qualities: “understanding of what needs to change; the ability to stimulate the intellect; a knack for encouraging participation, a talent for genuine communication, loyalty — within reason; a sense of the bigger picture; personal integrity; and an inspiring bearing [presence]” (www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs), qualities that are critical in the professional arena. You will be challenged to use creative and critical thinking to analyze the needs of workplace audiences and to deliver essential information to those audiences in a variety of ways such as instructing, persuading, and informing; you will also use visuals and page design within various modes of communication, written and orally, to attain your rhetorical goals. You will be encouraged to tailor the assignments to the issues and challenges in your major, future career, and or interests. Methods of instruction: Readings, discussion posts, weekly writing assignments, peer review, full class workshops. Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to: Produce documents in common professional genres. Respond to the needs of multiple audiences, including international/global audiences. Develop document designs that maximize effectiveness for the audience and purpose. Develop and deliver effective oral presentations using multi-media content. Conduct and incorporate primary and secondary research to support rhetorical goals. Write clearly and concisely with grammar and usage appropriate to the rhetorical situation. Transformative Leadership Objectives. In addition to developing the learning objectives, you will also be able to: Define Transformative Leadership, understand the benefits of this approach, and develop your own philosophy of this leadership role. Engage in reflection to identify your own leadership qualities and challenge assumptions about leadership. Explain how a respectful and empathetic collaborative environment where you listen to your peers’ point of view in an effort to negotiate and make collective decisions may yield a better work environment. Engage in reflection to analyze how you might recreate your leadership role to create a better work environment. Describe how Transformative Leadership enhances workplace communication practices.