Red Hat team helps Masaryk students learn technical writing

Red Hat’s Brno documentation team has spent four years helping Masaryk University teach technical writing, sharing lessons from the course at an open-source conference in Prague. The programme aims to prepare students for the collaborative work of technical writing and gives graduates public examples of their work to show prospective employers.

Some practical exercises proved difficult: students had varying access to laptops and command-line tools, peer grading needed careful guidance, and online teaching with changing tutors was less effective. Students also used large language models despite a ban, so tutors shifted towards teaching responsible use. Points, occasional prizes, meme-based feedback and a role-play exercise modelled on Dungeons & Dragons were among the approaches that worked.