Danisa Rambing Web Folio

In the beginning on the term, I came in hoping to learn more about the world of technical writing and research for public speaking, which I was able to learn a lot about throughout the term. Having briefly assumed technical writer roles in my previous jobs, I was very curious as to what the class could bring to my already familiarity with the subject. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with developing and creating pieces of writing that allowed me to learn more about professional development and self-marketing, especially to potential employers.

Throughout the term, I found the consistency of the assignments to be beneficial to my overall understanding of the material and the opportunity to apply my learning to my professional portfolio was also very important to me. I realized that often, the assignments from ENGL 301 were applicable to my own understanding of the industry I’m aiming to break into and they provided me with some sense of work to showcase to my potential employers. However, from the various peer review assignments I learned that I should also strategically say the specific ideas and message I’m trying to communicate to non-technical audiences and remove all personal academic and professional biases in my technical writing.

This class and the creation of this web folio allowed me to create projects and assignments that I’ll be able to utilize in the work place and demonstrate to potential employers my potential.

Finally, my skills and strengths as a student support my future career in the sense that I’ll have the technical skills to operate on specific machines and frameworks of most software engineering companies. This includes, but is not limited to, object-oriented programming, technical writing, project management, a concrete understanding of data analytics and mathematics, and the ability to utilize popular cloud services, such as Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services, as well as popular website and back-end frameworks like ReactJS, TensorFlow, and MongoDB

Creating a Web Folio has taught me multiple things about the ways professional and academic presentations can help me in my search for a software engineering internship/Co-Op work placement. Some of the things I’ve learned are:

1. Web Folios are an excellent way to demonstrate a personal portfolio and snippets of one’s personality in a concise and efficient manner.
2. Academic achievements can showcase talent and technical traits to employers looking for specific skills.

During the process of creating this web folio, I found myself reflecting on the past achievements I’ve accomplished throughout the entire term. Starting in September, I was quite skeptical to the idea that a personal website would be any different from social media outlets where I’m also able to market myself to potential employers. However, I’ve come to realize that web folios can increase the scope of potential employers by demonstrating my personality and background, in addition to my technical skills.

When building and designing this folio, I laid out the structure of my site to maximize readership and efficiency. Each menu widget leads to a specific section that allows the reader to know more parts of me and my portfolio. The About Me section allows the reader to learn more about my personality and former background, the Highlights section showcases my academic technical writing abilities, the Resume section allows readers to skip ahead and see my professional achievements, and the Application Package section shows employers how I’d be able to correspond to them/respond to a job posting.

As I created this project, I began realizing some of my weaknesses and strengths in both my learning process and assignments. As a weakness, I often have many assignments due at once and have a hard time prioritizing which to do first. However, as a strength I’m able to think fast and efficiently manage my studying patterns to utilize a ‘deep-work’ technique to ensure that my assignments are done to the best of my ability. Creating this web folio allowed me to realize that my learning process is one that is visual and communicative. I learn best about subject areas and other people by visually seeing people and information, and being able to communicate to individuals.

Researching my formal report

The process of researching for my formal report draft taught me a lot about how much information has been recorded on my subject area and gave me a sense of specific questions I should be asking, that I wasn’t yet. These questions include: 1) what does UBC’s financial budget infrastructure look like, 2) who is really in charge of handling the financial decisions, and 3) what are the consequences of the proposals I’m suggesting. Additionally, during my research, I found a lot of primary sources that allowed me to not only substantiate my claims but also to get a deeper insight into what arguments have been made against my claims. This includes opinion articles on topics related to financial aid but not necessarily related to Canada or UBC (e.g. opinion articles on US FASFA system, financial aid in private universities abroad) and also data sources that speak to the affects of financial aid on post-secondary education (e.g. research articles). The research component of this report was definitely a crucial step in my ability to organize and formally structure the argument of my report.

Organizing my formal report

After having done extensive research on my topic area and possible counter-arguments that go against it, organizing the report became a bit easier because I had a clear vision of what I wanted to say and how I’d use factual (primary or secondary) evidence to substantiate my claims. Also, since I had the opportunity to create an outline of my draft, I also had a initial vision of what to include in my report and what I later found became redundant to have as different headings or paragraphs in the report, which allowed me to further condense the initial draft of my outline. Organizing my report mostly came from the data and evidence I had, since I based my report on.

Writing my formal report

After having systematically researched and organized the structure of the report, the writing process became fairly straightforward and efficient. Since the chunk of the ideas and arguments were already nailed down and substantiated with evidence I found, the writing process became a matter of convincing the audience of the message my report had to say, which was essentially 1) the demand and necessity for financial aid for domestic Arts undergraduates at UBC and 2) how will this have an impact in their university careers. Through this process I learned that the main ideas and arguments must always come before the writing process, mainly to make it easier on the writer and to ensure that the writing will be clearer and more straightforward for the audience. While editing and peer reviewing is a process that can improve the argument of these ideas in writing, I learned that writing a report should always begin with a the brainstorming analysis first.

Process of researching to create a LinkedIn Profile

The process of researching how to create a LinkedIn profile was quite informative and made me reflect about my professional reputation. While looking through the best practices for using LinkedIn, I realized that the cultural traditions in social and professional communication has shifted drastically with the role of digital media in the modern age. This gave me a solid understanding of how to best use LinkedIn for professional gain.

For example, with the built-in recommendation systems LinkedIn provides, I advised that many LinkedIn users would find it in their best interest to update their profiles frequently in order to attract more employer viewership. The process of researching the LinkedIn best practices report gave me insight on how I can better improve my social media presence professionally and the information I gained while writing the report was beneficial to my own professional understanding of how employer/employee relationships can begin and prosper.

Process of brainstorming for the report proposal

As part of this current unit’s tasks, the process of writing the report proposal allowed me to reflect on topics that I personally went through during my first degree at UBC. This allowed me to speak from my personal knowledge of the systemic challenges of being a [former] UBC Arts student and taught me about the very specific details of how UBC’s financial budget works. As I began writing the outline for this report, I started to get a better understanding of the specific direction my report was going towards and it made me concretely sketch out a rough idea of how I was going to translate my message towards a non-technical audience.

Reflecting on my peer review for my partner’s proposal

After reading my partner’s proposal and creating a peer review for it, I began reflecting on how my writing can sound like to others. For example, after advising my to include concrete suggestions to solve their proposal’s issue, I realized that I would like my own proposal to include more concrete suggestions towards a possible solution to my report’s topic problem.

Peer reviewing has impacted my view on my own writing, and it gave me insights to how I could improve my writing style and clarification methods-such as giving more clarification on highly technical terms. The process of peer reviewing gives me more perspective on things I should and should not include in my own work.

Link to my revised report proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/10/15/assignment-21-research-proposal-for-a-formal-report-3/

Link to the Peer Review of my report proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/10/18/peer-review-assignment-2-1-formal-report-proposal/

Edited definition: User Interface

Throughout the writing process it became clear to me that my level of understanding of a term needed to be advanced enough to be able to simplify complex technical terms in the language that the average non-technical person would understand. Although I’m very familiar with the concept of “user interface”, my research into it’s history and origins allowed me to learn about the concept in a more real-world perspective while being able to conceptually study the term’s etymology, social context. It also allowed me reflect on the potential future for the idea of a user interface in modern technology. The main difficulty in trying to simplify the term “user interface” came from the broadness of the concept itself, since user interfaces exist in multiple ways (e.g. computers, GPS systems, smartphones, watches) and defining them in non-technical terms required me to simplify a lot of technical jargon when describing what a user interface was in each particular context. Suffice to say, defining a complex term and translate it into digestible information is a skill which I’m starting to realize takes commitment and practice.

The peer review process was a very helpful process in the writing process because it allowed me to have feedback on my writing. While my initial attempt to define the concept of “user interface” seemed organized and understandable to me, I soon learned that my assignment included technical jargon that would not be so easily understandable to the average non-technical person. The peer review also helped me find minor errors in the layout of the assignment itself, such as citations and references to certain concepts and terms (e.g. history of UI).

The editing process was much better than I thought because of great feedback my teammate, Morgan, provided me. I was able to follow her comments about very specific aspects of my assignment and that allowed me to tailor the comments to simplify technical jargon and provide more context to terms like “programming” or “animation” to my audience. Through this process I learned that editing should be a on-going process in order to improve the communication between the writer and the audience. Also, through editing my definition assignment, I was able to re-read my assignment through the perspective of the peer reviewer, which allowed me to add on more contextual excerpt to better clarify ideas that Morgan herself may not have considered to be technical jargon to a non-technical reader.