Extended Abstract: User Journey Mapping in Course Design and its Application in Technical Communication Pedagogy in China

Abstract

This presentation introduces an effective application of User Journey Mapping in Technical Communication (TC) pedagogy at Tongji University, China. The participants are a group of university students with little knowledge of TC who end up starting TC jobs for their careers. A 17-week course design is presented to show how academic TC contents are integrated with an extracurricular TC project supervised by industry supervisors. The journey starts from student failure in producing an instruction for the elderly to purchase a railway ticket online. During the journey, user experience-oriented class activities are introduced with typical examples like working on paper building models in class. The journey comes to an end with interviews by both the course teacher and industry supervisors for the final examination.