COURSE OUTCOMES

This practical course covers three main themes:

• Professional Writing Skills
• Project Planning and Proposal Writing
• Reporting Skills / Report Writing
  

PROFESSIONAL WRITING

Poor writing gets poor results. The message is lost, or the reader is unconvinced. A report's recommendations can get overlooked, and our proposals can fail to persuade donors. And many people find writing stressful - when it doesn't have to be that like that. Good writers aren't born that way. It's a skill that you can quickly and easily learn.

Professional writers all:

• Start with clear objectives
• Organise their ideas logically
• Aim to write clearly and be understood

And good writers are systematic. They don't waste their time staring at the screen, waiting for inspiration. Instead, they follow a sequence of steps - thinking, planning, drafting and editing - so they manage their work without deadline stress and consistently deliver writing that has impact.

Through these modules, you will learn how to take the skills you already have and use them to write clearly and persuasively - whether it's a report, a proposal, a press release, memo or email.

PROJECT PLANNING & PROPOSAL WRITING

Through the Project Planning and Proposal Writing modules, you will learn how to:

• Design a project your donors will support
• Plan, draft and edit a persuasive proposal

Through downloadable course videos, practical worksheets and extra materials, you will learn how to:

• Identify a project your donors will support
• Design a project using Logical Framework Approach
• Plan your proposal in a logical, persuasive way
• Communicate clearly and in a way that keeps your readers interested and alert

In this part of the course we address the challenges faced by development professionals when it comes to project planning and proposal writing, in a way that allows for maximum practical work. While you will get all the theory you need, you will learn the steps and tools in a way that you can apply time after time after the course is over so that:

• You will always know what to do each time you have to develop a proposal
• Your proposals will be well-organised, clear and persuasive - contributing to better relations with donors and, more importantly, increased donor support

REPORTING SKILLS

This part of the course will teach you to create reports that lead to action and support good project decision-making. You will learn a process for reporting that will reduce wasted time and deadline stress and lead to writing that has greater impact.

Through downloadable course videos, practical worksheets and extra materials, you will learn how to:

• Set reporting objectives and select the most appropriate data collection methods
• Analyse data and draw conclusions / identify lessons learned
• Plan your writing around the report objectives and reader's needs
• Organise your ideas in a logical, persuasive way
• Communicate clearly and in a way that keeps your readers interested and alert

In this part of the course we address the challenges faced by development professionals when it comes to reporting in a way that allows for maximum practical work. While you will get all the theory you need, you will learn the steps and tools in a way that you can apply time after time after the course is over so that:

• You will always know what to do each time you report
• Your reports will be actionable - contributing to better managed, more responsive projects and better results
• Your reports will take less time and be of higher quality

HOW IT WORKS

Once enrolled, you get immediate access to all the course materials - downloadable course videos, worksheets and extra materials. As a self-paced course, you work through a series of video presentations on various aspects of Project Planning, Proposal Writing, Reporting Skills and Professional Writing at your own pace.

The first part of the course examines the key skills of Professional Writing, while in the second part we move onto the process of project planning - working step-by-step through the Logical Framework Approach - before moving onto planning, drafting and editing the proposal. We then move onto the process of reporting - setting objectives, gathering and analysing data, and planning / drafting / editing reports.

This is a practical course. At various points you will invited to stop the video and complete different tasks. You will find the worksheets for these inside the course.

All of the videos can be downloaded for off-line study / reference, as can everything else - PDF slides, worksheets and reference materials.

There are tests at the end of each section to measure how successfully you have learned the skills and on completion of the course you are issued with your certificate.

Materials used in connection with this course are subject to copyright protection. Materials may include, but are not limited to: documents, slides, images, audio, and video. Materials in this course are only for the use of students enrolled in this course, for purposes associated with this course, and may not be retained except for personal reference. Unauthorized retention, duplication, distribution, or modification of copyrighted materials is strictly prohibited by law. For more information, visit the UNT Policy Office or Copyright.gov.