Alethea's ENGL 301

LinkedIn Profile

One of our assignments for this unit was to research and write a list of best practices for creating a LinkedIn profile. I have used LinkedIn for many years and used both my first-hand experiences and referencing secondary opinions on how to best utilize the platform to write my assignment. Over the years, I have made many changes to my profile based on current trends and feedback. Since I have this experience, I started the assignment by simply brainstorming some of the ways I feel my profile has been successful. This included things such as having a professional photo and formal, yet friendly language. Then, I went to secondary sources to see what other opinions are out there to both substantiate my initial ideas, and introduce me to ideas I hadn’t yet considered. for example, I had not considered joining professional groups on LinkedIn to network with professionals with similar interests. I added these newer ideas to my list. Conversely, some of my initial ideas didn’t appear in any of the other lists I found. For example, my recommendation to take a break from networking when needed to avoid burnout wasn’t confirmed by an external list, yet I decided to include it because it still really resonated with me.

Report Proposal and Outline

Synthesizing my ideas into a report proposal was a useful process to determine the feasibility of my plan and gain feedback. I was surprised that following a specific structure not only formalized my ideas, but helped develop them. For example, I hadn’t even considered what areas of inquiry I was interested until the report stipulated that they be included. Having to fulfill the requirements of the assignment actually helped improve my plan and I learned that structures can be helpful in making progress. This also applies to the outline, which encouraged a systematic laying out of each section of the report. I reflect that before completing the outline, I felt unsure of how to start making progress. The outline acts as a to-do list for me to reference while writing and makes the assignment feel more approachable. For example, the outline including a sections such as ‘limitations of the study’ not only reminds me to include that content, but gives me a chunk of content I can work on whenever I feel ready to, so the actual writing process doesn’t have to be linear.

Peer Review Process

After publishing my report proposal to the team forum, I had the opportunity to offer feedback to Cheka on their report on How to Better Support Note-Takers to Improve Learning Experience for Students at UBC. I was impressed with their proposal and was assured to see many of the organizational features such as bullet points and lists to be similar to my own work. I recognized that their structure and writing contributed to my interest in the topic, and it was persuasive. I was particularly impressed when they used tactful organization to break their problem into sub problems. I feel this not only is clarifying, but highlighted the importance of the proposed study. Cheka also peer reviewed my proposal. I appreciated the opportunity to gain feedback, and since our reports were structured similarly, I was reassured with their positive remarks. I particularly appreciated how specific their feedback on grammar and sentence structure was, and I implemented it directly. I also appreciated their suggestion to reference scholarly resources on my topic, and after consideration decided to take their advice. Overall, I received high quality feedback.