In Unit Two of ENGL 301, I had to research LinkedIn best practices and write a memo about ten best practices. Then I had to brainstorm a topic for a formal report and wrote a report proposal about the topic. Also, I peer reviewed one of my teammate’s report proposals while he reviewed mine.
For the LinkedIn best practices assignment, I had to find several sources online to create a LinkedIn profile. I compiled ten practices that I believed were the most helpful in creating a profile that would stand out to employers and recruiters. I attended co-op workshops at UBC that went through the common elements that should be included in a profile and I have an existing LinkedIn profile. During my research, I discovered useful tips to incorporate into my own profile such as having a headline that details your career identity and having a summary that is like a story about your professional career. Doing the research and writing a memo for this assignment and reading the memos of my fellow teammates reminded myself to update my LinkedIn profile. I believe I can improve my profile by following some of the tips that I learned from my own research and from my teammates thanks to this assignment. It was interesting to read about the many best practices that people have written about online and it shows how popular and powerful LinkedIn as a platform is.
I believe that brainstorming about a research topic was difficult for me as I wasn’t a part of any community organization. I was able to land on a topic about the library and how to best raise awareness of library resources because I feel like many people are not aware of the variety of offerings that are available. At first, I did not include an intended audience which Dr. Paterson reminded me to revise. I decided to change my initial proposal to target UBC students and added the Student Services Manager of the AMS to be my intended audience for my formal report. I changed my target population from the general public to UBC students because I thought it would be easier to reach UBC students with my surveys. Also, I believe that students would find resources about job search and application packages to be useful.
Being able to peer review my teammate’s report proposal and receiving feedback on my own was engaging and a great way to practice my proofreading skills. My teammate highlighted some common grammar errors and missing commas that I made in my proposal. My teammate also suggested adding clarifications in my introduction. In my peer review of my teammate’s proposal, the most common suggestion I made was to add clarification in several sections to provide context as to why certain areas of inquiry were being investigated. By peer reviewing my teammate’s proposal and writing my own, it is clear to me that writing proposals require several rounds of peer review to reach a point of clarity and quality that is convincing to the intended audience.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl30198a2022s12/2022/06/29/peer-review-of-bensons-formal-report-proposal-garrett-yeo/