Graduate Technical Writing Workshop
MIT's Comparative Media Studies/Writing program offers this workshop for graduate engineering students who must communicate technical results clearly. Lessons cover summarizing and paraphrasing outside sources, synthesizing multiple sources into a coherent argument, proper citation and quotation, and avoiding plagiarism. Students learn to draft an abstract and a literature review, two staples of engineering writing, and the course also introduces broader communication concepts and strategies for making dense engineering prose readable. Materials include the syllabus, assignments, and writing exercises used in MIT's own graduate writing requirement, available through MIT OpenCourseWare at no cost, with no certificate offered. The course was originally restricted to MIT students who scored below a threshold on the Graduate Writing Exam, so its exercises are aimed squarely at technical, not general, writing weaknesses.