English 301 is undoubtedly a very unique course. The course focused on practical writing pieces including writing definitions, writing a job application letter and resume, creating a LinkedIn profile,  writing business letters and more. 

Through this course, some of my strengths include learning from other people’s work  while my weaknesses include reflecting my work and not having background knowledge. Learning from other people’s work is one of my strengths as it helps to understand areas that my peers have been successful on and areas that I would need to review on for my work. Peer reviews in this course have been especially helpful for me as one of my weaknesses is reflecting and editing my work. When I finish my work, I often upload it very soon and when I edit my work, I often do not know what areas to focus on. Therefore, peer reviews offer an opportunity to spend time and review other people’s work to which then I can acknowledge areas to be careful of when I revise my work in the future.

Another weakness would be not having experience is business writing. As I do not have many opportunities to write formally other than essays, it was challenging to write in a new style and format. Another example would be that I do not have a LinkedIn profile prior to this course. I did not feel the immediate need to and therefore have not created an account before. Therefore, this course offered opportunities to experience writing styles and tools that would be beneficial in the future. 

My strengths of being an attentive learning is useful for the future as I hope to work with children and it is important to be attentive to detail as children will need more support from adults. Furthermore, my acquired skills of various professional writing is important for my future as knowing how to write application letters and a good resume is crucial to finding a job. It is especially important as I will be graduating in spring and finding a job is one of my priorities.

As our last assignment, we have the opportunity to create a web folio. At first it seems similar to the blog that was created at the beginning of the term. However, when I read the assignment in detail, I realized it is very different. The web folio is a compilation of most of our assignments of the term, including our initial introductions, various writing pieces and our reflections.

The process of creating the web folio was a little hectic. I do not have much experience with creating a blog and when I created a blog at the beginning of the term, it was through a lot of research and trial and error. I had forgotten a lot of the skills to create new pages or structuring my web folio. By far, the most interesting part of creating this web folio was learning how to attach a LinkedIn profile onto my web folio. With various trial and error, I found that my LinkedIn profile can be put on my web folio alike to a tag and not simply a link. When others click on it, it directs the screen to the LinkedIn website.

Furthermore, the process of creating the web folio felt rather complete. As I edit through some of my work throughout the term and compile different pages onto my web folio, it reminds me of the time when I had initially worked on those assignments. I noticed the varied types of writing we did and observed changes in my writing style too. In addition, I also really enjoy personalizing my web folio to which I had not in the blog. I was able to personalize my header image and seek out images that matched my blog style. Overall, Creating this web folio had been a positive experience and as I go through the different posts and pages, some images of me working through these assignments appear.

This unit has been one of the more challenging units. Although organizing and writing my formal report went smoothly, the process of research was more time consuming than expected. Editing my survey and interview questions as I wanted to maintain a neutral voice. Because of this, I had less time to complete the surveys and interviews. In addition, reviewing clients’ data also took longer than expected. While reviewing client data, I noticed many targets have changed and may not last 6 months long. Furthermore, one of my clients had new behaviour interventionists that joined the team and did not have 6 months of data. Hence, I was only able to compile 3 months of data. In the future, I should be mindful of the constant changes and consider more practical data research. I should also allocate more time to create survey questions.

In terms of organizing and writing my formal report draft, it seemed to be more straightforward. When completing the draft of my formal report, I realized that some parts from the introduction had been completed in the research proposal or research outline. Hence, some parts of the report were more about editing written work. The data collected had been quick to compile as my research sample was rather small. In addition, when completing the data analysis, the results resembled my expectations. This meant that the results were supportive of my recommendations and I could continue to offer those recommendations. Therefore, the overall writing of the report had been similar to my expectations and straightforward to complete. 

With peer reviewing, it has been an interesting experience. This was because everyone’s topic is different and it was interesting to have the opportunity to read and critique one of my teammate’s work. Furthermore, it was helpful for my writing as it highlights successful areas that I could consider to change in mine. Lisa, my peer review partner had clear distinct headings and subheadings with a strong font size contrast. This made it clearer as to where is a new section in the formal report. From reading her work, it helps me to reflect on additional areas to improve on in my own report.

Formal Report Draft: 301 Cheryl Chao Formal Report Draft

This unit was very eventful. I have never created a LinkedIn profile before because I did not feel the immediate need to and was worried about creating an unprofessional profile. Through this unit, I had the opportunity to research best practices on LinkedIn. It was a new experience for myself and I felt confident with creating a professional profile because I had the opportunity to be evaluated by my peers and I also had the opportunity to observe other classmates’ profiles. When reviewing my partner’s profile, it was also a new experience as I have not peer reviewed a network profile before and it was also my first time paying close attention to formatting and job titles. 

The process of brainstorming and preparing for my report proposal was slightly difficult. I understand that the report should be related to personal experience, however, most of my work or volunteer experience has been related to children. Therefore, I struggled to balance the confidentiality of the clients’ information and to propose a solution that I am passionate about. Furthermore, as I continued to prepare the report, I became hesitant to change a topic as most of my peers have started on their report and I was worried about not having enough time to complete my report. Currently, I have been given feedback from my instructor about survey and interview questions that are too personal and could cause an issue on confidentiality. I plan to revise my questions in hopes that it would not cause an issue on confidentiality. Once I have revised my questions, I will conduct an interview and a few surveys and propose my solutions to Ms. Pun. 

For this unit, I had peer reviewed Amy Yung’s report proposal. I have learned to consider the implications and clearly state it in my report. I noticed that Amy’s report proposal  mentioned the issue and importance of this issue in almost every paragraph. However, in my report proposal it was unclear of my report’s impact and the importance of this issue. Although I understood the importance of the issue, readers may be unfamiliar with my job, therefore, when working on my report, I should always clearly state my impact and importance. Peer reviewing my teammate’s work has impacted my writing as I often remind myself to write from a person without the same knowledge so I would not neglect information such as the impact and importance of my work. 

Revised report proposal: 301_Cheryl_Chao_Report_Proposal_Revised

Peer review of report proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2019wa/2019/10/16/peer-review-of-formal-report-proposal-improving-data-collection-accuracy-at-fairview-behavior-consulting-inc/