Colby's Blog

The long journey of learning technical communications has come to an end.

If people were to ask me, “What have you learned in ENG 301?” , a few things come into my mind right away:

1. Construction of peer reviews. In the beginning of the course, I was only able to follow the peer review guidelines given by the professor. As the courses progressed, I began to understand and see the elements which make a good peer review and became much more comfortable constructing peer reviews. I learned not only from reading other’s peer reviews but also from my own peer reviews as well. There were a number of times that I found the advice I was giving to others also applied to myself as well.

2. Summarizing information. Throughout course, there were numerous assignments which required us to summarize letters and progress reports in the form of memorandums. While I learned the techniques involved in writing professional emails and memos, the most important thing I learned was how to summarize information. I tend to be to wordy in my writing and these exercises really helped me focus on understanding the key points in my writing. By learning to summarize content, it made me realize the areas where I over explained, and areas which lacked explanation.

3. Writing with You-Attitude. An aspect I struggle a lot with the you-attitude writing is focusing on what the reader receives or can do, not on what I’ve done. I always started my peer review by saying “I have reviewed your…”. This habit of mine has now been corrected and my peer review will now be written with more focus on the reader rather than myself.

4. Preparing Professional Documents. My favourite assignments in ENG 301 were the creation of LinkedIn Profile and Web Folio. Through the professor’s teachings and the online research, I have learned the most effective ways of preparing cover letters, resumes, Linkedin profile and Web Folios. I have learned the proper format and tone of these professional documents along with content creation. These skills and documents will definitely be helpful for me in the future as I step in the job market. I put a lot of thought into the creation of my LinkedIn Profile as I will definitely be using this platform to network with professional.

5. Self Editing. The unit reflections blogs were tremendously helpful in developing my self-editing skills. The combination of peer reviews and reflections really helped me realize my own strength and weaknesses. I began the habit of changing my writing by incorporating the best elements found in other’s writing.

Overall, my expectations coming in for this course were mostly all met. I learned the distinctive elements of writing in professional, business and technical context, designed online portfolios, and developed peer review and self editing skills. An aspect of writing I still want to improve on is sentence structure. I still lack creativity when it comes to creating sentences. However, I feel that I have definitely become better at writing concisely and I am now much more comfortable with writing overall.

I would like to thank Dr. Erika Paterson for her guidance and designing this course. I really enjoyed the interactive environments and definitely learned a lot. Thank you!

Web folios are becoming increasingly more popular as a way to present oneself professionally. Web folios allow its creators to show much more of themselves than a normal resume would. Creators have the freedom to show off their creativity and market themselves with a lot more interesting contents that can help capture potential employers’ attention.

For my current web folio, I am following the ENG 301 instructions in providing the relevant reflections blogs, introduction, biography, application package and Linkedin Profile. Upon completion of the course, I will definitely be changing a lot the aspects to concentrate the web folio to show case my professional skills, projects and my personality. I have already included some illustrations and previews of my projects and achievements on the introduction page and have included a project’s page that contains more detailed documents and projects I have done. I believe providing physical documents of my research poster and abstracts can really strengthen my application and allows visitors of my page to see real examples of my work. As I will be pursuing a second degree in computer science following my graduation, I have started working on some personal projects related to coding. I will be posting the personal projects I have completed on my projects page and show my improvements as a software engineer through these projects. I will also be taking advantage of the best works page to showcase my best projects when I have done enough. The blog page will mainly be used for displaying my personality and interests. Like in ENG 301, I will write reflections blogs on what I learned through my projects and critique myself in the process. My biography page will change as well as I begin to accumulate more experience and become interested in the different things. I really enjoyed personalizing my web folio with visuals, hyperlinks and documents as it really allowed me to show off my creativity and make my web folio unique. I will definitely continue to use these strategies to make my web folio as attractive and as interesting as possible in the future.

Overall, I enjoyed working on my web folio and I am happy with what I have created. I feel confident that I will be able to make the necessary changes to my web folio to suit my professional interest in the future.

This week’s unit is mainly about the process of writing a formal report. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching and composing my report as the topic I choose was something that I cared about. This assignment provided me with an opportunity to propose a solution to a problem that I always wanted to address. Having been participating in the UBC intramurals for so long, I always wanted to address the problem of skill imbalance in the league as it was making the intramural experience less enjoyable for a lot of people, however, I never took the initiative to solve this problem because I didn’t know how to proceed. This is mostly due to the fact that I did not know how to compose a proper report for proposing solutions and addressing issues.

The research I conducted was mostly through interviews and surveys. Gathering information by the means of survey and interviews from primary sources was a new experience for me as most scientific reports are based on lab results and reviewing articles. It was a very interesting and rewarding experience gathering opinions of other players who shared similar views on the need to improve intramural experience. It was not very difficult to gather participants as I knew most of the players in the division. I was able to collect all my data with relative ease and efficiency. The Technical Communications textbook provided very helpful outline of how to construct a proper formal report. Following the guidelines, I was able to effectively organize my data into appropriate sections with headers and present the data in a logical manner.

I found the process of peer reviewing for this assignment to be a bit difficult. My partner’s draft did not yet contain the data he had collected and it was very difficult to provide a detailed review on the report without them.  My partner, however, provided me with a very detailed and thoughtful review which I found very helpful. He pointed out the major flaws in my report and made effective suggestions. I realized I had included a lot of unnecessary information in my introduction and did not offer clear explanations for some terms. One of the things I noticed with my writing is that I tend to skip explaining detail with concepts that are familiar to me but are not familiar to the readers. I am always assuming the readers know what I am talking about. I realized I need to improve on writing from the reader’s perspective and implement the strategies I learned from the first unit where I explained a technical term to a non-technical audience. My peer reviewer, Solomon, effectively pointed out this area for me. Again, the peer review part of this unit was invaluable and will help greatly help me improve my writing.

One of the most interesting and important part of Unit 2 was the peer review of research proposal and designing a peer review for LinkedIn. I learned a lot about my own style of writing and how to critically assess other’s writing in the process.

For this week’s peer review, we were given the challenge of designing our own peer review template. For the review of Jongrin’s research proposal, I broke down the peer review into individual sections of his writing and commented on each section. I thought this was the most effective way to peer review a proposal as I can effectively cover all the areas and comment on all the individual sections in an organized manner. The peer review process for the research proposal was immensely helpful as the readers will often pick up on crucial details that are missing. I find that the writers generally tend to leave out details that are obvious to them but are not obvious to the readers. Jongrin and I were good partners for this review as we are both active SRC users and are familiar with each other’s situation. Jongrin was able to point out an important aspect I failed to address in my research proposal which is the flaw of using a player’s profile to assess skill level. It is definitely very difficult to accurately assess a player’s skill from just experience and this is a major flaw in my proposed solution which I will need to address.  As a regular SRC user myself, I shared Jongrin’s concern with the current SRC conditions. I was able to provide Jongrin with a more complete areas of inquiry to help him strengthen his cause.

I found the LinkedIn peer review slightly more difficult to prepare as the categories for review were not as clear. However, after researching effective LinkedIn strategies, I was able to prepare a review that was suited for assessing LinkedIn profiles. One of the key suggestions for LinkedIn profiles is to include as much detail as you can, something that I noticed lacking in the description of work in Solomon’s profile. The peer review process also helped me recognize my profile’s weaknesses. As Solomon pointed out, I failed to mention my career goals in my summary which is crucial in identifying potential employers. I also realized I need to join and be more active in group in order to expand my network. The peer review and research process for LinkedIn were immeasurably helpful in improving my profile effectiveness and completeness.

Overall, I enjoyed this unit as I got to learn and think about the process behind writing a research proposal and making an effective LinkedIn profile. I enjoyed the review process as I was able to help others improve their writing as well as learn from theirs.

During the course of my academic career, I have frequently prepared presentations and reports to communicate with experts within the field. This definition assignment was a great exercise that helped me learn the strategies involved in communicating to a non-technical audience. From doing this exercise, I learned the difference in levels of detail between a parenthetical, sentence and expanded definition. In addition to understanding the different types of definitions and when each should be used, I also practiced using definition expansion strategies such as etymology, examples, visuals and operating principle. From reading my peer’s definition, I realized the effectiveness of these strategies in guiding a non-technical audience to understand a technical term. As a reader with limited computing background, I was able to follow my peer’s definition of shell because of the expansion strategies he implemented.

My reviewer, Vincent, provided constructive feedback for my definition and pointed out the errors I have made in my writing. He showed me areas where I lacked clarity such as the use of the term “embryo” and corrected my grammatical mistakes.  From reviewing Vincent’s work, I also realized some of the change suggestions I made for him can also be applied for me. I noticed that both of us lacked a conclusion in our writing and did not explain some jargons clearly. The peer review process and the feedback really helped me break down the areas of my writing which needed work, and also showed me areas which I have done well in. I did a good job organizing the contents of the expanded definition in a logical order which made it easy for the reader to follow but I need work on limiting use of jargons and explaining jargons for non-technical audiences.

In my edited version, I expanded on the term embryo for audiences with limited medical terminology. This was an excellent suggestion by the reviewer as it is very likely that a non-technical audience would not be familiar with the term embryo. I have also added a conclusion which summarized the objective of the writing and the definition strategies implemented in my writing. I believe the addition of a conclusion really helps complete the structure of the writing and demonstrates the key points of the writing to the audience.

Overall, this week’s lesson helped me understand the importance of knowing your audience and how to write thinking from a reader’s perspective. The peer review was a useful learning tool as critiquing my peers helped me realize my own weaknesses as well.

To see my revised defintion, please click English 301 Definition revised.

The peer review provided by Vincent of my defintion is seen here.

The peer reviewed provided by me of Vincent’s definition is seen here.

123 Main Street

Vancouver, BC V5E 2T5

January 13, 2015

English 301 Technical Writing Class

The University of British Columbia

2329 West Mall

Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4

Dear English 301 Class,

Application to English 301 Writing Team

As a student looking to improve upon his technical writing skills, I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to become a member of your writing team this semester. I am currently a fourth year biochemistry student and looking to pursue a second degree in computer science after graduation. I believe the writing skills I will learn from the team will greatly benefit me in any professional field I choose to pursue and my previous work and volunteer experiences make me a valuable asset to the writing team.

During my undergraduate degree, I have worked in several team-based environments. I was a research assistant for UBC Biological and Chemical Engineering and UBC Ophthalmology where I have completed several pieces of technical writing such as proposals, abstracts, and formal reports. I was also a co-author in our research poster that was presented at the Paptac Biorefinery Summit. Through these experiences, I have improved my ability to critically assess literature, write in a clear and concise manner, and demonstrated the ability to work effectively in a team.

In addition to my work, my volunteer experiences have helped me further develop my interpersonal and communications skills. As an Impact BC Basics for Health family worker, my team and I interacted with individuals and families with diverse cultural backgrounds on a weekly basis at Reach Community Clinic and assisted them with problems regarding finance, education and social supports. This experience has taught me a lot about the effectiveness of being in a team and sharing responsibilities as I found that we were able to connect clients to resources much quicker in a team than individuals.

I am a strong believer in the value of learning in a collaborative environment and I excel at working in teams. I consider feedback from teammates to be one of the most valuable tools in learning and take participation very seriously. I have a lot of practice in the area of scientific writing which focuses on structure and being concise, but I still have a great deal to learn in term of efficiency and creativity. I hope to find teammates that can complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses which will make our learning experience as effective as possible.

Thank you for taking your time to consider my application. If you would like to form a team with me, please feel free to contact me at colbysong@yahoo.ca.

Sincerely,

Colby Song

301 Colby Song application letter