Of Horsemen and Layered Literacies Assessment Instruments for Aligning Technical and Professional Communication Undergraduate Curricula with Professional Expectations

In this study, we attempt to answer the following questions: What conceptual and practical skills are deemed important by academics and practitioners, and how can they be sum- marized, illustrated, and applied to course development and program assessment? We review the scholarship on conceptual and practical skills and visualize our analysis in an explanatory matrix. Then we place the conceptual and practical skills into instruments for use in assessing individual courses and inventorying program curricula in technical and professional communi- cation. Finally, we apply the inventory instrument to the top or "core" courses in technical and professional communication (Meloncon and Henschel 2013).

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