Unit three started with small writing assignments like the memo to Evan Crisp regarding the best practices in writing an e-mail to a professor seeking to be added to a full course, and business letters that express a complaint or deliver bad news. The adoption of the “YOU-Attitude” in these writings has immensely helped me with the peer review exercise later in this unit.
The major assignment of this unit was to finish researching, organizing and writing the first draft for the formal report – Recommendation for Small-Wheeled Vehicle Lanes on the Main Roads in UBC Vancouver Campus. This task was a lot more time consuming than I expected. Initially, there was very low response for the survey I posted. After I realized that I may end up with a very small sample size, I started posting the survey link in more UBC related groups with an engaging message hoping to get more responses. Although I still ended up with a fairly small sample size, I worked with the data I gathered and created figures for some questions on the survey. I found myself having to be selective for questions that most directly answers the major questions of this report, such as the students’ overall attitude on the implementation of small-wheeled specific lanes on the major roads of UBC. In addition, formatting the visuals to fit the message that I want to convey was a process of trial and error. Some decisions that I had to make include whether to use a bar chart or a pie chart, whether to have bars go horizontally or vertically, adjusting the size of texts of the labels and the legends so that they are evenly spaced out and legible etc.
After I am satisfied with the visuals, I started from the outline I wrote from unit two and wrote down the headings and subheadings of different sections. This way it helped me with having a mental picture of the report structure before I delve into writing each section. For the introduction, I took the approach of going from broad to specific: from the general background on the growing skating community, to the problem with road design in UBC and proposed solution of having small-wheeled vehicle specific lanes implemented, to what questions I intend to investigate with this study and how I intend to do so. The data section was very straight forward as I just reported the results of the survey data I have collected while including figures. However, researching for the practicality of implementation was a little difficult because there were very limited information and regulations on these vehicles. Therefore, I referenced bike lane implementation guides as a basis for implementing small-wheeled vehicle lanes. Another interesting fact was that I found the documentation for the design of the entire UBC campus while looking for the material paving the different roads on campus. It was fascinating to see how much thought went into building a beautiful campus from the big structures such as roads and buildings, to the small details such as trees and lighting. Lastly, in the conclusion section, I summarized the results from the survey, addressed the limitation of this study (a small sample size) and provided recommendations on implementation based on the results. Overall, I tried to write with a formal and positive tone throughout the report.
In terms of the peer reviewing process, the biggest thing I have learned from reviewing Jackson’s report and Jackson’s comments on my own report was the importance of consistency in formatting. His report was very well organized with a table of contents and even a separate table for figures. All the headings and subheadings were bolded to separate from the body of writing, and they were all formatted in a consistent way that allows clear distinction between sections. Jackson also went above and beyond the requirement and completed the entire report with the letter of transmittal, abstract and the finalized reference list with appendices. His report looked appealing and complete, and only minor fixes with some sentences were suggested by me. I wrote my peer review while trying to incorporate the YOU-attitude, and I have found that this peer review’s overall tone sound less nitpicky and more straight to the point of improvement. I will definitely use the YOU-attitude more in my future writings, and It’s been a pleasure being able to review Jackson’s work.
My Formal Report Draft: ENGL301_FEI_DU_Formal Report Draft