Author: CarmenChow

For half of the semester, I was not correctly following instructions as I experienced confusion with the site’s layout. Because of this, I was simply following very vague instructions from the course schedule, as well as using my peers and my textbook as a reference. Time management was also difficult for my learning process. Often times, I would feel rushed to finish my assignments and submitted them, knowing full well that I had not put my best effort into it.

I believe one of my strengths in this course was peer reviewing. Initially, one of my worries was that my peers would not handle my constructive criticism well, or that they would ignore my suggestions. After submitting my reviews, I would follow-up with my group members’ assignments to see if they had considered my opinions. I was thrilled to see that my peers had incorporated my suggestions into their writing, with one of them even mentioning how that I had helped him change the structure of one of the assignments.

After completing this course, I feel that it was able to enhance my professional writing skills. As I currently work as a receptionist at a car dealership, I incorporated what I learned from this class into my workplace. After I graduate, I hope to also use these skills when I begin my career in the finance and banking industry.

Designing a website is a task that I have had experience with. I have made several blogs in the past, and currently use the Tumblr social media platform to display my works as a hobbyist photographer. As a result, designing my webfolio’s theme, colour schemes, and organizing the links was not very difficult for me. In my final webfolio, I changed the theme and colours entirely to reflect a more minimalistic and professional tone. I also made sure to give my blog posts unique titles, as well as organized them by “Unit Reflections” and “Assignments”. I also gave a drop-down menu for each of my best assignments under the “My Best Work” category for a more unique way of displaying my work.

However, editing all of the work I’ve done over the past semester proved to take a much longer time than I had anticipated. I could notice the differences in the writing style from my first assignments to the writing styles in my most recent ones, and I was eager to change it.

Researching, organizing, and writing the formal report draft proved to be quite challenging for me. For this assignment, there were several issues I had come across that could have been avoided, as well as issues that came unforeseen.

Even though I had a research schedule planned weeks in advance, I was struggling to follow the deadlines I had set for myself. For this assignment, time management was essential in doing well. Because of a misunderstanding that I had encountered with the ENGL 301 site’s navigation, which resulted in a re-do of my proposal and planning,  a lot of my scheduling had to be postponed. As I work 40hrs a week, there were only certain days where I could complete my research, and it became difficult to complete everything according to schedule.

I also noticed that my original planned format for my report had changed drastically by the time I had completed the rough draft. There were several unforeseen issues that I had come across, including altering several of my survey questions to make sure the research I was conducting was relevant to my report. From this experience, I learned that I had to think much further ahead to exactly how I was going to structure my report, and then work backwards to brainstorm the specific questions that were going to be relevant to my work.

Peer reviewing is one of my favourite assignments in this course. I am able to learn from my peer’s writing style and improve my own writing. This time, I had the pleasure of reading Yuta’s report and study how he writes in the “You” style. While giving him suggestions to improve his work, I made sure to also learn from how he structures his paragraphs, and how he organizes his words. One thing he had done differently from me was his use of sub-headings. While I had one general heading for each category (Introduction, Data, Conclusion), he had various sub-headings under each of those major headings so that it was easy to navigate through each piece of information. From what I have learned from seeing his example, I hope to incorporate it into my own writing to perfect the final draft of this report.

In this unit, the focus was towards formal report proposal writing, networking and resume building, as well as outlines and progress reports. Overall, I believe this portion of the course not only challenged my professional writing skills, but my time management as well.

Before taking this course, I was not aware of the impact that LinkedIn had in the professional world. As a result, I never gave a thought to start up a profile, despite many of my peers’ advice to do so. Based on the tips my group had listed in their memos, I was able to set up my profile to appear professional, and was able to connect with a lot of my old peers who had suggested that I create a professional profile. One of my peers already had a professionally set up profile, and I used it as a reference for my own. I carefully selected the relevant skills and achievements, customized my URL, and built my profile according for my preferred audience. Because it was my first time in using this platform, there were several practises that my peers had listed that I could not put to use. At the time, I was not able to be fully engaged in the community, but I had joined several groups and associations to start building my network. I had then added friends, family, and coworkers to this network so they could endorse me as I will have done for them.

I decided to base my report on the issue of financial illiteracy amongst students. Preparing the proposal and outline was difficult as I was not used to planning so far ahead for an assignment. I had to plan out how to efficiently carry out an analysis of this issue, as well think of relevant questions to ask in the interviews. After many revisions and writing out the outline, it was much easier for me to realize what information I had wanted to be used into my report. As I was also working 40hrs a week, time management was also difficult for me at this time.

My peer review was not done correctly, and I had not followed instructions. This was due to the fact that I could not navigate the website, and I had based my instructions off the course schedule, textbook, and looking at how a peer has done it. This has taught me the importance of looking through the site layout, or simply ask questions if I noticed that I was not receiving adequate instructions. However, reading and critically analyzing my peer’s report has given me ideas on how to improve my writing, and receiving their feedback has been equally as important and helpful.

Attachment: 301 Carmen Chow Formal Report Proposal

Link: Peer Review for Kevin Gonzalez

Due to a peer not submitting a report on time, I had the luck of being reviewed twice. Both of these peers provided me with important suggestions and I had spent a good amount of time reviewing my work after. It is interesting to note that one of my peers was already familiar with my term, and the other was not. Both reviews gave me a broader perspective on which areas to work on. This is my reflection on what I have learned in this assignment, with my definition of the game theory term, “the prisoner’s dilemma”.

Both of my reviewers were extremely helpful in providing positive and constructive feedback on my work. Because I was missing a lot of the criteria in my original assignment, my peers were able to provide helpful examples to help my understanding. For example, I seemed to have misunderstood the concept of the parenthetical definition. My peer included the textbook definition that it was meant to be a “clarifying phrase”, and even provided me an example that I reworked into my report.

I had already assumed that a visual representation of the dilemma was the deciding factor for understanding the theory behind it. Sure enough, my peers agreed that the graph had helped substantially; the peer who had never heard of the term before had noted that the visual had drawn his attention. However, both of my reviewers had noted that my example of the term was confusing and not explained very well. I had given a real world example of the dilemma by using the effects of Brexit, with the players being the European Union, and Britain. As a result, I had decided to completely take out that example, and instead used an experiment my game theory professor had performed with my class in a previous semester.

Participating in peer reviews is mutually beneficial for everyone involved. It had given a second and third perspective to my work, and it had massively improved my assignment. As a result, I hope that my personal review of my fellow peer’s report has also benefitted him as much as it had done for me. I found that while reading another student’ assignment, I was able to also learn from his writing style, as well as learn what I was missing in my own work. I made a mental note of all this, and tried to incorporate it into my final editing process. Being positive and critical is an important part of the writing process, and I look forward to learning more from my peers.

Attachment:3.1 Definitions (Revised)