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Metropolitan State University (Home)

Science and Medical Writing emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

College of Liberal Arts / Technical Communication and Interaction Design
Undergraduate major / Bachelor of Arts

About The Program

This major prepares students for a wide range of careers in professional writing and interaction design. It enables learners to write for professional and technical contexts and produce multimodal and intelligent content. In addition to completing a core curriculum, learners choose to specialize in one or more of these emphases: technical communication, science and medical writing, user experience design, and game design. 

Science and Medical Writing Emphasis:
The Science and Medical Writing emphasis enables learners to produce content for science and medical writing situations in research, government, technology, and other contexts. Learners apply rhetorical theory to create effective science and medical writing deliverables for a variety of audiences. They analyze how power and knowledge iterate within science and medical writing. 

Other available emphases

Technical Communication Emphasis: 
The technical communication emphasis enables learners to write and produce multimodal and intelligent content for technical problem-solving. Learners write technical documentation and ensure that such documentation is usable, accessible, and compliant with regulations. 

User Experience Design Emphasis:
The user experience design emphasis enables learners to analyze, design, and evaluate the user experience of content. Learners use various methods and tools to analyze users and contexts and construct the user experience. 

Game Design Emphasis:
The Game Design emphasis helps students produce interactive and static writing artifacts that showcase their ability to write creatively, technically, and consistently across complicated technological environments. Using principles and strategies utilized in the video game industry, this concentration allows students to create innovative game worlds; write compelling storylines, characters, and mechanics; create and maintain design documentation; and work with a variety of different team members and in a variety of different roles in a production team. Students who choose this emphasis do not need any prior programming knowledge.

Student outcomes

  1. Analyze the audience and context of rhetorical situations
  2. Use digital technologies to create effective technical and scientific communication artifacts
  3. Write and design interactive content that is engaging and rhetorically effective
  4. Create and edit for ethical, inclusive, and accessible content
  5. Evaluate communication artifacts for effectiveness, usability, accessibility, and compliance

Related programs

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your Science and Medical Writing emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your Science and Medical Writing emphasis, Professional Writing and Interaction Design BA

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Core Requirements (20 credits)

This class begins with students self-assessing their digital skills in several areas, including design for print and digital documents; web tools; visual tools; and project management tools. Students work with the instructor to create a learning contract with the goal of acquiring tools in a certain number of these areas. In order to acquire knowledge of these tools, students complete online tutorials. Only offered S/N.

Full course description for Digital Tools for Writing and Communication

Content strategy encompasses the creation, management, testing, and governance of content, whether that be a website, printed document, social media, or other forms of information. In this class students will gain a comprehensive understanding of content for contemporary information-intensive organizations as well as hands-on skills to create effective, user-friendly, and culturally sensitive content.

Full course description for Content Strategy

Artificial intelligence (AI) is used in workplace writing and communication practices. This course offers a basic understanding of core concepts relevant to AI writing tools. Students will be prepared to use AI writing tools in responsible, ethical, and productive ways for technical and non-technical audiences. Students are introduced to generative AI tools and learn to design effective prompts to help with the writing process.

Full course description for Workplace Writing with Generative Artificial Intelligence

This course covers editing principles and techniques. Topics include how readers use and comprehend texts, the editor's role in the publication process, the writer/editor relationship, and editing for organization, format, style, grammar, punctuation, usage, consistency and accuracy. Students edit a variety of texts, including technical documents and newsletter articles in print and online.

Full course description for Editing

This course introduces students to the principles, processes, and techniques of front-end Web development. Students gain solid knowledge and practical skills in HTML, CSS, website genres, design patterns, Web writing, and usability. Students will analyze and build websites. Students must already possess basic satisfactory digital literacy, such as managing files and folders, and adding and removing programs.

Full course description for Writing and Designing for the Web I

Science and Medical Writing concentration (16 credits)

This course is informed by the rhetorics of health and medicine, an interdisciplinary field that attends to how language and symbols are used in public health, medicine, nursing, and communities. Understanding how contemporary language plays a powerful role in healthcare and communities especially with regard to health equity, health access, and inclusion is the central focus of this course. The language we examine and the power that language enacts includes patient-provider communication, pharmaceutical advertising, government-sponsored communication, and health literacy. We analyze, critique, and design deliverables such as case safety narratives, clinical study reports, patient materials, websites, package inserts, and decision aids. In this course, we attend to reproductive justice, women¿s health, and disability, as well as how racist, transphobic, and homophobic rhetorics manifest in health documents in order to examine and/ or propose alternative rhetorical strategies…

Full course description for Rhetorics of Health, Medicine, and Social Justice

Medical writers work with medical professionals, scientists, engineers, and other subject matter experts (SMEs) to produce drug, intervention, and disease-related deliverables for technical and nontechnical audiences. They work within an array of contexts that include publishing, medicine, health insurance, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, marketing, advertising, education, and nonprofits. This course provides a foundation for professional medical writing within medical, regulatory, and technology contexts. Students assess rhetorical situations and determine best practices for designing ethical, responsible, and clear medical writing. Students leverage and critique AI in medical writing, use medical research databases, conduct user research, and design medical writing deliverables (e.g., label, insert, intake form, protocol, website, device) to be more inclusive, accessible, and ethical. In this course, students are introduced to AMA style, plain language, inclusive design practices,…

Full course description for Medical Writing

This course offers a rhetorically-based, process-oriented approach to strategic, effective writing of proposals and grants for individuals and organizations. The course is designed primarily for writers, artists and technical communicators who expect to find themselves, as freelancers or as employees, seeking funding for a variety of programs and projects in academic, nonprofit or corporate situations. This course provides a systematic process for analyzing audiences, writing needs statements and finding sponsors all within an electronic context.

Full course description for Writing Proposals and Grants

One of the following

This course focuses on the multidisciplinary field of environmental communication and helps students understand the ways in which environmental issues and conflicts develop, the values underlying the ideologies on these issues, the ways in which these values are presented, and the variety of scientific and technical communication genres involved in understanding environmental communication messages. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism.

Full course description for Environmental Communication

This course introduces fundamental concepts in computer programming and the development of computer programs to solve problems across various application domains. Topics include number systems, Boolean algebra, variables, decision-making and iterative structures, lists, file manipulation, and problem deconstruction via modular design approaches. Lab work and homework assignments involving programming using a language such as Python form an integral part of the course.

Full course description for Computational Thinking with Programming

Is it ever right to try to hasten a patient's death? Should people ever be given medical treatment against their will? How should we decide who will get access to scarce medical resources (like organ transplants)? Do people have a right to get the care they need, even if they can't pay for it? This course will use ethical theories and theories of justice to explore these questions and others like them. It is intended to be helpful not only to (present or future) health care practitioners, but also to anyone who wants to think about these issues, which confront us in our roles as patients and as citizens whose voices can contribute to the shaping of health care policies.

Full course description for Medical Ethics

This course is designed to provide an understanding of the health care industry and the theory and practice of face to face and mediated forms of communication by health care administrators, managers, providers, and patients. Students will analyze both common and best practices in health care campaigns, training, public relations, patient satisfaction, patient advocacy, administration, media covering health issues, and public education. Significant focus is given to issues of race and racism, and how social constructions of race and racism affect perspectives and create disparities in health care access, communication, and outcomes experienced by different populations.

Full course description for Health Communication