Unit Two started two major sections of the course: the report and our LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn profiles are necessary to obtaining jobs in a social media centred society and it is important to ensure that your profile is as appealing as possible to potential employers. We completed the proposal, outline, and timeline of our report this unit. This report will be an excellent exercise in not only technical writing, but surveying, interviewing, investigative reporting, and data compiling.
Unit Two was more rigorous than Unit One for several reasons. The formal report proposal was especially challenging. I have strong opinions on the amount of plastic waste produced by our country, but I wasn’t sure exactly how I wanted to proceed. I decided to tackle the manageable task of recording what plastic waste is produced at UBC food vendors and offer recyclable or biodegradable alternatives. After peer reviewing, my peer reviewer pointed out to keep the subject specific to Canada and focus less globally because my readers will only be able to affect local waste. With his advice my report became more succinct and realistic.
A LinkedIn profile is a necessary evil in a modern world. Social media has consistently been shown to increase anxiety and depression, but not having a Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn profile can make a person look like they’re not part of society. Job seekers with updated social media pages simply do better in job searches than those without. I understand the importance of a LinkedIn profile and will be working to maintain the better standard that my page now has because of the peer review process. With my reviewer’s help, and advice from my team’s best practices blog posts, I cut a lot of unnecessary filler from the page, rendering it more concise and readable.
My personal peer review process was challenging but less difficult than the previous unit. While my partner for the LinkedIn page review had excellent content, her page was lacking involvement, specific details, and qualifications. I made recommendations to her to try to be more involved in LinkedIn by ‘following’ pages and ‘liking’ articles to show that she is active on the website. The review process for the formal report proposal also went smoothly. I was able to make good suggestions to my partner to detail exact surveying techniques and overall increase the conciseness and clarity of his report. Again, I was able to make these suggestions in a positive and constructive manner as specified in the textbook.
Overall, I believe that peer review was a valuable experience for improving my writing and I look forward to the learning objectives in Unit 3.
Below I have included links to Henry Lee’s peer review of my report proposal, and my revised report proposal.