Do you wish to become a technical writer but are not able to find the quality in courses that you wish to possess? Then your tiresome search for technical writing courses in Malaysia ends here. There are top-notch institutes all over the globe offering world-class courses and training online as well as offline. You just have to make your choice and pick one.
Malaysia is an emerging economy with shifting its economy from agriculture-based to manufacturing and service sectors. With the IT industry booming in Malaysia, there is a significant contribution of the ICT sector to Malaysia’s GDP. The role of technology is going to be held accountable for the nation’s development and the increasing number of infrastructure sectors.
On the other hand, Malaysia is becoming the education hub with various foreign universities setting up their campuses in Malaysia. In this fashion, possessing good education and honing skills become paramount to one’s career.
Not only in Malaysia but in other parts of the world as well, the employment rate for technical writers is expected to grow by 10 % in this decade. And with the huge number of efficient English speakers in Malaysia, technical writing becomes a sought-after career.
In the course of learning engineering and technology, there are not many choices for technical writing courses in Malaysia. That’s when all the training and learning platforms come into play.
This article lists down all the top choices for technical writing courses in Malaysia, online as well as offline. But before you dive into the details of any course at all, let’s get the basics of technical writing clear.
Writing any piece of technical information in a layman’s language is technical writing. The technical terminology is difficult to understand and thus a simplified form is required. So, yes, the manual book you get with your printer or your microwave was written by a technical writer.
Technical writing is not only required in the IT or engineering field but in any field which involves technical work and its subject terminology, which is beyond a common man’s understanding. For example, chemistry, biotechnology, aeronautics, finance, robotics, computer hardware, software, and the medical field.
What do Technical Writers Write?
There are numerous ways in which technical writing is required apart from writing manual books. Technical writers are responsible for creating How-to guides, white papers resume, FAQs, product descriptions and specifications, press releases, business proposals, email writing, reports, etc.
In businesses, where a business proposal is to be written for an international client, the absolute technical writing skill comes in handy especially when English is not the first language of any of the parties. A precise and concise business proposal makes all the difference to a client.
Who can Become a Technical Writer?
A technical writer is expected to be from an IT or engineering background, but it is not necessary, as I mentioned before, technical writers are required in any of those fields where a piece of information is heavily loaded with technical terms and is required to be conveyed in simple language to the non-technical readers.
If you are tech-savvy or have enough knowledge to understand the technicalities of the field then you are good to go. One must take care of a few prerequisites which a technical writer shall possess. Since it is the work of writing simplified documents, good command of the English language is something basic to have.
Research skills always come in handy when it is about technology and its technicality. Any writer should be able to present himself with communication skills as communicating the intricacies of technology is the foremost priority of a technical writer. Today, in any field of work, proficiency in the fluent use of digital tools has become essential.
To understand technical writing better, read: Everything You Need to Know About Technical Writing Courses
Top 10 Technical Writing Courses in Malaysia
The following list of courses will help you to choose the most suitable course for you.
1. IIM Skills
One of the best technical writing courses in Malaysia is offered by IIM Skills. It is one of the strongly established institutes in 2015 and offers the best quality since its inception. It stands on the front of employability skills training with its placement dedicated cell. Its list of courses is all in demand and well-structured to the industry standards.
The master trainers lead the course and are industry trained. These industry experts carry heavy years of experience and provide all the exceptional and practical knowledge in their live sessions. The classes are run online with flexible timings. So, if you are a working professional and looking to upskill yourself as a technical writer then you can fit the course into your schedule easily.
Moreover, IIM Skills provides lifetime access to their LMS (Learning management system) where you can also find your session recordings if you missed your class.
The course spans over 5 weeks of online classes with 20+ hours of live training sessions and 60+ hours of practical assignments. The course curriculum is in alignment with the top MNC recruiters such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, etc.
What do you learn in the technical writing course?
- Introduction to technical writing
- Writing reports
- White papers
- Journals
- Research papers
- Conversational writing
- API Documentation
- Medical writing
- User manuals, datasheets, and application notes
No technical writing course is complete without a case study in it. So along with the case study, reviewing and publishing process has also been taken care of in the course. The digital tools are quite at the core of any technical writing course as technical writing is not only about the skill of simplifying the language but also designing, editing, and reviewing come in the process.
This course is crowned with the most valued tools for technical writing as the right set of tools makes the work all the more qualitative to meet the industry standards. The course expands with several tools covered such as MS Visio, Git, MS Project, Scribus, Robohelp, XML, and many more.
Benefits
- Guaranteed 1-month internship
- Dedicated placement cell
- Lifetime support (consulting and technical)
- Portfolio development for job/freelance
- Publish your first white paper
- Publish a scholarly article or a book chapter
- Get your first technical blog published with Times of India
It is a certification course where you will receive your certificate after the course completion, which is widely recognized and decorates your resume very well.
Other qualitative courses offered by IIM Skills
2. Dream Catcher
Dream Catcher, established in 2002, located in Singapore and various parts of Malaysia, is a well-recognized institute for technical writing courses in Malaysia, aiming to provide world-class training and professional quality across the globe.
Their training is aimed at helping managers, engineers, or technicians who are looking to give an edge to their writing skills. The learners learn to write and organize a technical document that is precise and well structured. The training is conducted in a 2-day workshop format where the curriculum is divided into a total of 4 Modules including case studies.
In the course, you learn:
- Introduction to technical writing
- Content, form, and style
- Writing for different audiences
- Grammar and Punctuation
- Structure of a technical document
- How to adhere to the goals of technical writing
- Writing illustrations
- Logical strategies of technical content
The trainers are long-standing consultants specific to the field of content creation and communication. Dream Catcher recommends the course to those who have a good command of English and technical background. The duration of the course and the content covered in the short period of two days make the course one of the lucrative choices among others.
3. itraining Expert
Based in Malaysia, itraining Expert is a corporate training and consultancy partner known for its dynamic and practical approach. They are equipped with the most accomplished and experienced trainers providing one of the progressive technical writing courses in Malaysia.
A trainer and a counselor, Dr. Barrak, lead the course. Having extensive experience of more than 20 years in communications and training, his training is aimed at competency development.
This is an intensive 2-day course where the classes are conducted online with many teaching methods involved such as hands-on activities, group discussion, lectures, and case studies. The course takes an in-depth look at technical report writing. The following topics are divided into 9 modules.
- Basics of technical report writing
- Writing for multiple audiences
- Report strategy
- Use of storyboard
- Report structure
- Analyzing report
- How to prepare for a report
- Focus on language of report writing
- Preparing a final report
It is a certification course where you receive an e-certificate of achievement. And though it is a 2-day training course focused on report writing, the curriculum is quite vast and informative.
3. British Council
The British Council has been working in Malaysia since 1948 and helping young learners to achieve the desired skills in the language. It is the United Kingdom’s international organization and has expanded over years making its presence felt in every country.
The organization has courses for young learners as well as adults. It helps the participants to know their English proficiency level in one-to-one sessions before it offers customized corporate training courses before enrolling any participant into a course.
It has partnered with various other organizations including the education ministry of Malaysia where they look after different educational activities to provide a global perspective to the new-age learning. The course covers overall skills required in technical writing incorporating precision, writing style, clarity, structure, accuracy, writing abstracts, instructions, and editing a technical report.
A science experiment is used to get hands-on technical writing but the course is suggested for anyone who has any technical writing to do including engineers and IT staff.
4. Coursera
Coursera is a platform that provides varieties of courses in partnership with well-reputed universities and institutes. It has self-paced courses as well where you can learn from the recorded videos and alter your deadlines of the projects according to your schedule.
Coursera has charted our list of technical writing courses in Malaysia due to its global reach. The course is designed and instructed by Elena Bazanova, from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
The course takes approx. 19 hours to complete, and do not forget that it is a self-paced course so the hours may differ depending on one’s pace. Coursera provides a shareable certificate on the completion of the course that definitely helps in elevating the LinkedIn profile.
The course covers varieties of writing styles to write various technical reports such as laboratory reports, research reports, and progress reports alongside language, content, style, and structure issues.
Owing to the fact that it is an online self-paced course, worrying about the learning outcome is obvious but the course modules are followed by a number of tests and graded quizzes along with plenty of reading material. If you are a busy working professional but still want to authenticate your technical writing skills, this course will do for you.
6. Udemy
Udemy is a well-known ed-tech platform providing a plethora of courses across the globe. There are various kinds of needs for technical writing courses in Malaysia and Udemy provides the one where you want to upskill yourself for personal or professional growth.
The courses are formatted in sequenced recorded videos and one gets a certificate of completion after the course. The course doesn’t come with any deadlines. You just have to do a one-time purchase and then you can access the course anytime.
The technical writing courses on Udemy deal with one particular aspect of technical writing at a time but still covers a wide range of topics with multiple courses available.
A few of the courses available on Udemy
- Business Writing and Technical Writing Immersion
- Technical Report Writing
- Technical Writing: Master your writing career
- Advance Professional Technical Writing
- How to Write Software Documentation
Udemy is a good choice for its affordable prices and a platter of choices. You are free to choose from a variety of courses according to your specific need.
7. ACS Distance Education
A course taken from a foreign university by sitting at home is most definitely the absolute choice for many. ACS is a distance education college in Australia affiliated with 18 other institutes across the globe. The courses, notes and recommended readings are all developed and designed by ACS staff. They are student-centric and developed for experiential learning.
The course enlists all types of technical writing from scientific articles, e-books, papers to manuals and product descriptions. The course requires you to spend approx. 100 hours on the readings and the assignments. The assignments are to be submitted and returned after correction with constructive tutor remarks.
ACS suggests the course to anyone from a student to a working professional who wants to improve their career prospects in technical writing. Though it is distance education, it covers all the pillars of technical writing and is a good option for technical writing courses in Malaysia.
8. Algonquin College
Algonquin College has been educating international students with its 3 campuses in Ottawa and in partnership with one in Kuwait. It aims to emerge as the global leader in connecting international students and imparting personalized and experiential learning.
Bringing online the on-campus quality classes, it started out with its online courses 16 years ago. Thus, with experience in online teaching, it serves the premium quality of technical writing courses.
Students get individual assignments and collaboration as well. Hence, setting the right environment of learning online with international students. It is an online graduate certificate program that is sufficient for all the needs to become a technical writer.
The curriculum discusses researching and analyzing techniques, writing for the intended audience, specialized tools to author documents, and creating structured documents online or in print form.
The course also teaches you how to create instructional videos and podcasts, and that makes it worth a 1-year program. To possess a 1-year graduate certificate in technical writing which can transform your career does sound attractive, doesn’t it?
9. LinkedIn
Now, who hasn’t heard of LinkedIn and its reputation in the world of work, business, and professionals. You might have your own account on it, but you never think of LinkedIn in regard to its learning platform, which is overflowing with innumerable courses which are relevant today.
The designers of LinkedIn courses are all well experienced and are pros in their fields, and they update the courses from time to time as well. LinkedIn’s list of technical writing courses is a little out of the ordinary as the courses are skill-specific.
Courses available on LinkedIn
- Technical Writing: A Quick Start Guide
- Writing a Proposal
- Writing a Press Release
- Writing Case Studies
- Writing a Business Case
- Writing White Papers
The content of each course justifies its title and can be completed in just a few hours. The only cost you would have to bear is the charges of LinkedIn premium where all the courses are accessible. While without premium access, there is only a limited number of courses out of its 16000 + courses, which are available free. The LinkedIn courses are in the form of recorded videos and are best to refresh or authenticate your knowledge of technical writing.
10. Henry Harvin
Henry Harvin is a continuously rising global EdTech company and offers courses for upskilling and reskilling. It is based out of the US and India with an international clientele. Henry Harvin presents the nine arms of the course namely training, projects, internship, certification, placement, e-learning access, boot camps, hackathons, and 1-year gold membership.
Apart from other institutes providing technical writing courses in Malaysia, Henry Harvin has a Post Graduate program in technical writing as well. While the technical writing course has 32 hours of online interactive sessions, the post-graduate program has sessions for 6 months. Both the courses offer a well-structured curriculum incorporating all the basic and important topics for technical writing.
What makes this course stand out among others is the number of tools explored in the course. It covers authoring tools (MS Word, Notepad++), screen capture tools (Snipping, Fireshot), image editing tools (Sangit, Adobe Photoshop), spell check tools (Grammarly), and technical writing software tools (API documentation, PowerPoint).
If you require a little extra training in terms of basic internet skills and writing content that is not technical, then the post-graduate program is the one you would want to look for.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much time does it take to complete a technical writing course?
Taking into consideration all formats of technical writing courses in Malaysia, it can take from 2 days in a workshop or a year in a graduate program. And other certificate courses take 1 to 2 months.
- How much do technical writing courses in Malaysia cost?
Depending on the time and location of the institute, a course can cost between 100 MR to 3000 MR as a few institutes charge fees in their local currency.
- What should I look for in the technical writing courses in Malaysia?
The curriculum of the course represents its quality and worth, so take a look at the curriculum of the course and anything else that might suit you better than any other course.
- Can technical writers work from home?
Writing jobs, whether it is technical writing, content writing, or blog writing, can be done from anywhere. So, technical writers can work from home as freelancers. Though they are employed on-site as well.
- What do employers expect of technical writers?
Any company which looks to employ a technical writer aims to have a technical document written faster which is also easily readable. An employer, other than the applicants’ skills, looks for writers who are educated in the field of technology with good knowledge of the English language and its usage in technical writing.
Conclusion
Even after being efficient enough in your field of work, technical writers are always supposed to be on their toes to catch up with the new trends and technology upcoming in the marketplace.
The changing approach and style of writing also stand as a tough challenge for any technical writer. Thus, taking a course will not only manifest the new information but refresh the old skills as well, and thus keeping the writing standards up to par.
All the accessible technical writing courses in Malaysia contain various different elements, some focusing on a particular task of a technical writer such as technical report writing, while others offer a strong platform building from the basics to the apex. Choose a course that you find right for your current skill set as everyone intends to educate themselves differently.
