To: Daniel Tsui, Student ENGL 301 Technical Writing UBC
From: Coco Chen, Student ENGL 301 Technical Writing UBC
Date: November 19, 2021
Subject: Review of Your Assignment 3:1 – Formal Report Draft
Peer Review / Formal Report Draft: Draft for reducing carbon emissions by incentivizing the use of electric vehicles on UBC Vancouver Campus
Thank you for submitting a well-written draft report detailing the use of non-electric vehicles and their problems at the UBC Vancouver campus, and suggesting ideas for reducing carbon emissions by encouraging the use of electric vehicles. Please refer to the following vetted proposal for further improvement.
Initial Impressions
Overall, the draft formal report is very well written. The report is very clearly structured and succinctly addresses the range of difficulties that current UBC parking facilities pose to the rollout of electric vehicles. The report makes pertinent recommendations to UBC Parking Services based on information including survey data and literature.
Title Page :
The title page is concise and clear. Clearly indicates the content of the report with short, clear headings. The author covers the basics of reporting on himself and the audience of this report on this page.
Tabel of Contents:
The table of contents is clearly and concisely organized with all necessary headings and subheadings. However, the graphs and data results in the data section are mixed together, which results in segments that are not clear in the text. It is recommended to use the same subtitle as this page to distinguish them in the text.
Introduction：
- The background information section gives a brief explanation of basic information about UBC and the current work at Parking Services. This explains why most students drive to school.
- The problem statement section explains why it is important to promote the use of electric vehicles and how their use will be a problem at UBC. The presentation that combines future trends with the current state of affairs is a great way to quickly inform the report reader of the importance of the issue.
- The scope of the report refers to UBC faculty, staff, and students who use UBC parking facilities and are concerned that ownership of potential electric vehicles requires knowledge of current potential environmental impacts and issues. This scope is written in a vague manner and thus does not define a specific study population. It is recommended that the scope be changed to include faculty, staff, and students who use UBC parking facilities.
- The study methodology mentions that the survey will be collected by anonymous completion, but would like to add basic information about how the survey will be published and the platform on which it will be published.
Data Section：
A large amount of data, including Primary data and Secondary data, is provided here to help further highlight the problem and support the proposed solution. Adding charts to the report makes the data more visual and thus better contextualized. In addition, all tables and images have been carefully designed with appropriate captions around them. However, the logic of the data analysis section needs to be strengthened, and the cause-and-effect relationships between several sets of data need to be further clarified to facilitate the results in the conclusion.
Conclusion
The analysis of the data leads directly to the conclusion that more electric vehicle chargers need to be installed on the UBC Vancouver campus. However, the conclusion is somewhat unsupported due to the lack of logic in the data analysis section. It is recommended to briefly explain the cause-and-effect relationship between the above data sets in this section before drawing a conclusion. Although not required, it is recommended that all recommendations mentioned in the report be organized in bullet points and included in the report.
Structure & Organization
The structure of the report is very clear and its good flow and connections make it easy to read. Each major heading is appropriately labeled, but the subsections of the Data part are not clearly delineated.
Final Thoughts
In summary, the proposal is reasonably logical and is an important investigation that will improve the environmental sustainability of UBC. However, the description of the target population, the refinement of the survey methodology, and the explanation of individual qualifications in the proposal need some revision. I hope I can provide some useful suggestions to help you make a stronger final proposal. If you have any questions, please contact me.
Reviewed Blog link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/11/16/formal-report-draft-2/
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