Following the completion of Assignment 2.3, I wrote up my thoughts about Unit 2 and the various assignment within the unit.

LinkedIn Research

Research on making an effective LinkedIn profile, and methods to make best use of LinkedIn was enlightening. Prior to this course, I have actually not used LinkedIn at all. I will ensure to amend this – LinkedIn has countless features that will no doubt prove invaluable to my professional career in the future. Endorsements and recommendations especially are extremely useful tools that I would like to make more use of moving forward.

Formal Report Proposal

Initially, the most difficult part of forming the proposal was thinking about what to write about. I was unsure at what to write about, as I did not feel experienced enough to make any major changes. However, once I figured out what I wanted to write about – improving advertisement strategies at my local martial arts school – the process was fairly straightforward. I had spoken previously with some fellow students about this lack of advertising. Writing the formal proposal and designing the outline of the report was simply giving form to all the issues and ideas that myself and my peers had noted in years previous. I feel that once I gather enough data from primary and secondary sources, forming a successful strategy should be a simple task.

Formal Report Proposal Peer Review

Writing the peer review this time around was significantly easier. The previous peer review served to be a good experience to learn from, and the process was straightforward. This time around, I ensured that my peer review was well-structured and formatted. Additionally, Alanna’s proposal was for implementing extra-curricular exercise activities for her and her team at work, something very closely related to my own formal proposal. This made offering critique and proofreading significantly easier than before.

Link to Alanna’s Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/19/peer-review-of-brendan-chans-formal-proposal/

Link to revised Formal Proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/14/brendan-chan-formal-proposal/

Link to Formal Report outline: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/25/brendan-chan-formal-report-outline/

Following the completion of Assignment 1.3, I came up with some thoughts about the entire process – Writing, editing, and revising my article.

Writing

At first, when I began writing I believed that the task would be fairly straightforward – I have previously had to give presentations on the subject to my co-worker. However, I then realized that the definitions would not be targeted to fellow experts of the subject – instead, the audience would be towards an educated audience, but one unfamiliar with the subject matter. It made writing a bit more interesting, as I had to often pause and change my wording to help better explain information, as well as add details I often took for granted to be common knowledge in my field.

Peer Review

Peer revision was fairly interesting. I peer reviewed one of my fellow Technical Writing Team member’s assignment: Alanna Mckeigue’s three definitions for the term ‘Periodontium’. It was a unique opportunity to both learn about subject matter I had previously not known about, as well as give critique from a more uninformed position. Alanna had very detailed definitions for her term, and I quickly grasped the subject matter. Additionally, I took away some tips from her writing that I would myself use in my revision later on.

Revision

Revision was fairly straightforward – Alanna’s review was succinct and clear, and gave me information on where to improve. Additionally, I changed some aspects that I saw could use improvement from when I was reviewing Alanna’s article. Alanna’s perspective helped me change some aspects that I otherwise would not have seen – the process was extremely useful for improving my writing.

The following links are for the articles written in the process:

Alanna’s peer review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/04/alannas-peer-review-of-brendan-chans-definition-of-lateral-flow-assays/

Revised definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2021sa/2021/06/09/brendan-chan-revised-definition-of-lateral-flow-assay/