3-98 (November 1998) Education and Training by Jeanne Lewis-Sturmhoefel Sweden

How did Karlstad, a medium-sized town in central Sweden, come to be a "centre of excellence" in Technical Communication?

Well, a lot of it has to do with Ericsson. In the mid-80s the company began to concentrate on electronic design and technical information and asked the University of Karlstad to provide its whole staff with training in technical English.

I was given the job of organising and implementing this training programme, and in doing so I discovered the plight of engineers who were required to produce information about their high-tech products (in both Swedish and English), but who had absolutely no training for this kind of work. There was practically no school or university training in Technical Communication in Sweden (or, in fact, in Scandinavia or in Europe as a whole at that time) and I decided to do something about it.

The University of Karlstad seemed an ideal place to start such a course. It not only had engineering and science programmes, but also had all the subjects required for technical communication. So Göran Frödin, the (then) Managing Director of Ericsson Programatic (now Ericsson Infotech), and I vowed to make Karlstad a centre of Technical Communication - and we did!

Teaching Engineers Communication Skills at the University of Karlstad

The course was developed in close collaboration with Bengt Nilsson, an experienced technical communicator who at the time was the head of Ericsson Programatic's Technical Communication Department, and started in January 1988. The focus was entirely on developing the skills needed to prepare good technical documentation. (See Brigitte Beuttenmüller's and Ron Blicq's articles in TC-Forum 2:98.) No engineering or technology of any kind is included in the course; it is offered as further education for qualified engineers and technicians who want to improve their communication skills and be able to produce better information, either because they use these skills in their present jobs or work as technical communicators.

As it is mainly people who are already qualified and working in industry who are aware of the need for these skills, we developed a part-time course which can be combined with work or other studies for one, two or three years (corresponding to one and a half year's full-time study) rather than a full-time degree programme. And, as it is the only course of this kind in Scandinavia, it is run as a distance course with meetings Thursday-Saturday four or five times a semester (about 9 times a year).

In addition to Technical Communication the syllabus also includes Swedish (Technical Writing), Technical English, Art and Graphic Design, Information Design, Communication Studies, Information Production and Commercial Law. There is also a considerable input by experienced practising technical communicators and other professional experts.

There is strong emphasis on practical training. Project assignments at the end of the first and second years require that students to produce correct, appropriate and effective information for a specific purpose, in correct and appropriate language (Swedish or English), with appropriate use of graphics and layout, using appropriate media and with an assessment of the production cost and other financial factors and constraints (such as product liability). In this way the students apply the knowledge and skills they have acquired on the course in a simulation of the real world of the technical communicator. This project work is supervised by an experienced practising technical communicator.

In the first year the emphasis is mainly on acquiring practical communication skills. In the second year the focus is more on the acquisition of knowledge - both within the academic subjects studied and in the professional field. And in the third year the syllabus includes current research and scientific method, and students are required to conduct a research project and write a dissertation on it.

Some of the students, in fact, are already working as technical communicators and many others get jobs as technical communicators during or immediately after the course. Companies like Ericsson Infotech and Ericsson Telecom are continually expanding, and an increasing number of other employers are becoming aware of the importance of high-quality technical information and of the existence of a course which trains people to produce it.

Future Development

Karlstad will become a fully-fledged university on 1 January 1999 and there are plans not only to further develop the present part-time course but also to develop a full-time course which can be incorporated in a degree in engineering, science or data processing. By the year 2000 we hope to be able to offer a complete degree programme in Technical Communication.

We also hope to have greater resources for research and for expanding our contacts with other universities offering courses in Technical Communication, not only the Swedish universities at Eskilstuna and Malmö but also universities in other countries. We have had considerable contact with Coventry University and we are very interested in the type of co-operation and exchange of ideas that was discussed at Forum 95 and, hopefully, will be revived at Forum 2000.

"transline Deutschland - Übersetzungsdienst für technische Übersetzung"