In Unit 2, students were presented with a variety of assignments to enhance their technical writing abilities and acquire new skills in diverse forms of professional communication, including networking and report writing. Additionally, this unit marked the start of developing our formal report.
Formal Report Proposal
To begin the second unit, we were tasked to brainstorm about an inefficiency or deficiency that we noticed from our previous volunteer, community, or workplace experiences. As a loyal Aritzia customer who has firsthand experience with the Aritzia change rooms, I decided to address an issue that people commonly have about shopping at Aritzia. Despite Aritzia’s efforts to provide customers with a unique and personalized shopping experience, many customers have expressed concerns about the change room design. Rather than providing individual mirrors inside each change room, Aritzia opts for communal mirrors in the shared space outside the change rooms. This may discourage customers from using the fitting rooms due to reasons such as lack of privacy, overcrowding around the mirrors, and inconvenience. I believed that my personal experiences and familiarity with the brand provide me the qualifications to research and propose a solution to this topic.
Peer Review
The peer review process has proved highly advantageous owing to the valuable insights garnered from peers and the exposure to diverse writing styles. Having an additional pair of eyes has proved immensely helpful in identifying errors and refining our writing. For instance, Michael’s review of my research proposal brought to light that the use of the superlative “many” can be rephrased to avoid sounding exaggerated when no evidence is provided. Collaborating in a writing team has also helped me become a better self-editor. After reading Michael’s research proposal, I was impressed with the level of detail provided and went back to my own proposal to further elaborate on my ideas. By going through other students’ submissions, I was able to learn from them and acquire effective writing tips and techniques that I could apply to improve my own assignments. I was most surprised by the diversity of experiences that my peers had during their time at UBC, and how the differences in their backgrounds could influence our writing styles. Overall, I believe that the peer review process has made me a more knowledgeable and meticulous writer.
LinkedIn Best Practices
Our next task was to research techniques for professional networking and building an online profile on LinkedIn. In this age of social media, creating a public LinkedIn profile is almost essential for building a professional social network and connecting with recruiters and like-minded peers. LinkedIn connects students and alumni to industry professionals, allowing individuals to acquire professional relationships and opportunities. Although I had previously created a LinkedIn profile, I was not consistently updating my experiences and had not used it as a tool to network and seek job opportunities. After researching and reading tips from other students, I realized the importance of keeping an up-to-date profile and identified several components of my profile that I could improve on. For instance, adding an engaging ‘About’ section that introduces my professional interests. Additionally, requesting LinkedIn recommendations could improve credibility.
Formal Report Outline and Memo
After generating a formal report proposal, we were assigned the task of developing a formal report outline and a progress report memo. The process of designing survey questions for the formal report proved to be quite challenging. It was unexpectedly difficult to compose engaging survey questions that didn’t unintentionally incorporate personal biases. The Instructor’s Blog proved to be a valuable resource for learning how to construct positive, non-leading questions that would still elicit thoughtful insights from survey respondents. Overall, I am pleased with the progress of the formal report as I have been able to meet deadlines and incorporate feedback from Dr. Paterson and my writing team to consistently refine my writing. Upon receiving approval from Dr. Paterson, I promptly distributed the survey to study participants and am currently on track to complete primary data analysis by the deadline outlined in my progress report.
With this said, Unit 2 was incredibly informative and I look forward to the final two units of this course.
Angie’s Formal Report Proposal