Assignment 3:3 – Peer Review of Yang Liu’s Formal Report Draft

To: Yang Liu, ENGL 301 

From: Yifan Wang, ENGL 301 

Date: 18 Nov, 2021 

Subject: Peer Review for Formal Report Draft 

 

Thanks for sending the draft for formal report “Determining the Feasibility of Providing New Workshops”. Overall this is a very detailed and informative draft. It clearly explained how new workshops would make UBC CS students more employable. Please find some suggestions about further improving the draft below.

First Impression

Overall, this report focuses on how UBC CSSS could fill in the missing part of CS education to better prepare students for career by holding workshops that facilitate hands-on learning and collaboration. The plan sounds reasonable and doable. Well done!

• Apart from programming languages, other tools such as frameworks could also be discussed, as they are also widely used at work these days.

Introduction 

In general, this part is concise. The introduction clarifies how UBC’s education focuses on theory and students lack coding skills, and proposes that UBC CSSS should handle this issue. Well done.

• However, The first paragraph started by introducing the popularity of Computer Science major among other majors in different universities. This seems a bit irrelevant to the problem. 
• It would be more detailed if a single person could be named to be responsible for addressing this issue. For example, the president of CSSS. 

Data Analysis 

This part focuses on analyzing students’ technical background including familiarity to programming languages, learning sources, and places to improve, etc. The use of diagrams in this section is appropriate, and the explanations are clear. Well done! 

• It will be clearer to add the actual question asked in the survey before each diagram.
• Too many jargons such as “frontend” and “backend” are used, it will be appropriate to briefly introduce these terms at the beginning of this section. 
• The visuals should be labeled.

Conclusion 

The conclusion section is logical. It first stresses the importance of having workshops, then provides suggestions on holding workshops. The conclusion and recommendations are backed by both the result of surveys and secondary sources (research). Good job!

• The recommendations would be more practical if it could be related to the current status and functionalities of CSSS. 

Organization

The result is divided in three main sections: Introduction, Data section, and conclusion. All contents are placed in the correct places. Nicely done.

• Information of intended audience should be on cover page for readers to tell the target audience quickly.
• There is a table of content, but there are no page numbers. 
• The report would be easier to read if it could be further divided by sub-sections.

Revisions

Here are some revisions that might further improve the report:

• Removing the relatively unrelated part in Introduction.
• Naming a leading person in CSSS who is responsible for addressing the issue in Introduction.
• Adding the actual question before each diagram in Data Section.
• Providing some definitions to jargons.
• Labeling the visuals.
• Relating the recommendations with the current status and functionalities of CSSS
• Adding intended audience and page number.
• Dividing each section into sub-sections.

To sum up, this draft for “Determining the Feasibility of Providing New Workshops” provided necessary background information, detailed data analysis, and feasible recommendations. Hope the suggestions could be helpful. Please feel free to ask any question.

 

Enclosure: ENGL_301_YANG_LIU_Formal_Report