About W231: Professional Writing Skills
W231 Professional Writing Skills is offered by the Writing Program at the IU Indianapolis School of Liberal Arts.​
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In W231, students complete a 10-week, intensive research project for a community client. After connecting with the client, students provide 100+ hours of exploration, research, and analysis at no charge to their collaborators. This experience-based course combines academic rigor and community service; the assignments challenge students to explore, analyze, and innovate to compose practical recommendations that address workplace problems.​
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W231 includes independent writing projects throughout the semester as well as the team project.
Independent writing projects include:
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Connecting with and interviewing local professionals
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Practicing a variety of different types of professional writing genres (emails, memos, letters, recommendation reports, etc.)​
Team/Community Client Recommendation Report
The 10-week team project condenses and summarizes over 100 hours of online and database exploration with the team's local study to shape recommendations for the formal recommendation report.
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Some organizations who have worked with W231 students for the team project include:
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​Old Spaghetti Factory
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Hire Attire
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ISBVI
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Brownsburg BSA
Thousands of Students Serve Indianapolis and Get Real World Experience
In the last two decades, over 15,000 students completed W231. These students partnered with over 2,500 community clients. ​Each team of W231 student writing consultants is made up of four to five students.
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Student-teams explore best practices and industry trends through academic databases and online sources; they condense a team's 100+ hours or research into a Review of Literature.
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Next, teams create and distribute a local study to gather real-time information on the challenge.
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Finally, teams invests about 100 hours in analyzing their findings and composing the recommendation report.
This year W231 students will partner with approximately 100 community partners and dedicate over 25,000 hours to their projects.​
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To learn more about the class W231: Professional Writing Skills visit: https://liberalarts.iupui.edu/english/pages/writing-program-folder/courses.php#rtab5