To: Zachary Goldman
From: Sydney Dunn
Date: June 24th 2020
Subject: Review of Formal Report Proposal
I have been reviewing your Unit 2:1 assignment for English 301 and have been impressed by the overall thoughtfulness of your proposal. The problem you plan to address is timely and appropriate given the current circumstances and your research has the potential to benefit a significant portion of the UBC community.
Here I have included some suggestions for revisions broken down into the corresponding segments of your proposal.
The Introduction
Your introduction does an effective job of introducing the extent of the problem. To help make this even more clear your second sentence could be reorganized and simplified slightly to really highlight the consequences of classes moving to online. This may mean breaking the statement into two sentences to really emphasize that the shift to online classes eliminates access to labs and equipment, which in turn results in unequal opportunities for students.
The Statement of Problem
This section felt very clear and is an excellent summary of the introduction. It creates a very clear outline for the reader of the problem and makes it easy to follow your proposed solution and methods section.
The Proposed Solution
In my reading of this section it took a moment to understand that the second sentence is suggesting UBC follow recommendations for sanitation and social distancing. Adjusting this to be more specific about the sorts of recommendations the BCCDC has would clarify this. This change would help the reader to understand how UBC could consider opening spaces like labs and libraries.
Scope
The areas of exploration described in this suggestion are overall quite clear and expand well on the previously described problem. My only suggestion would be that point number two on the list could be expanded to ask how much equipment the university currently has and if certain departments have received more attention and funding than others.
Methods
My suggestions for this section are about word choice. As I understand it, “online consultations” could be written as “interviews” or even “surveys.” The method may vary depending on who the intended recipient is (like a more formal interview for faculty and a general survey for students).
Qualifications
This section feels very clear and I appreciate that you explain your personal connection to the problem.
I hope that you find these suggestions helpful as you revisit your proposal and commence your research. I believe you have been very successful in identifying a relevant problem and outlining a manageable solution. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding the comments I have made, I am looking forward to seeing how your research progresses.
(original assignment: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/20/email-memorandum-formal-report-proposal-2/)
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