English 301 has been a very interesting experience. As a computer science major, I have not needed to take an english class in many years. I appreciate all of the writing skills that this class allowed me to practice. I definitely feel that my academic and professional writing skills have benefited from this course. I feel that one of my biggest improvement was in providing helpful feedback to people through peer reviews. Peer reviewing peoples’ work requires strong attention to detail and often requires genuine thought into what the person is trying to convey and how that can be improved. Attention to detail is something that I sometimes struggle with and I feel that it has improved throughout this course. One of my weaknesses in this class was maintaining organization so I that I could meet deadlines. This class probably had the most deadlines of any course that I have taken in university, and to some extent, I was caught off guard. I especially found it difficult to keep up with deadlines during the busy periods in my other courses (which unfortunately happened a lot this semester).

Like many other students, this class was requirement for my degree. I am genuinely pleased that it has ended up giving me very practical skills that I can use in the future. I especially found the entire process of making my formal report to be a particularly valuable experience. Interviewing and surveying people about a topic that I care about ended up giving me a much more nuanced view of the situation. I also felt that formulating my own solutions involved a level of creativity and thoughtfulness that is not often found in university writing assignments. This course is certainly one of the most practical courses that I have taken in university, and I appreciate the skills that I will take with me when I enter the workforce.

LinkedIn Profile/Professional Social Media Network

I found this to be a helpful experience because I am nearing the end of my degree and interested in networking with other professionals. I found that the skills I learned here complimented the skills that I learned through science co-op very well. Using LinkedIn is becoming increasingly relevant and I have occasionally gotten recruitment messages from tech companies. I am hoping that the improvements made to my profile can help me get more recruitment messages from high caliber companies.

I also found that the peer reviewing someone else LinkedIn account gave me insights into how I might appear on social media. I think that being critical of someone else’s work can help you to improve your own. I hope that he takes my review into account because I think that it would make a real improvement to his profile.

Report Proposal & Outline

Report writing is an important skill in almost all professions. So I found that this proposal was a great experience. I have genuine interest in making computer science part of the elementary and high school curriculum because I wish that I had been exposed to it when I was younger. I think that giving kids more exposure to computer science will help increase the talent in the field and also help to increase diversity within the tech sector.

I also found that outlining my report was particularly useful. I am someone who struggles with organization so making this outline is a great resource for me to refer to during the report making process.

Peer reviewing Eric’s report proposal was an great experience. I feel like he chose something relatively achievable to enact change to. I do not know very much about badminton so I thought that it was an unique and interesting topic to make a report on.

I found the definitions assignment to be very relevant to my academic studies. I feel that it is important that computer scientists are able to communicate their science to people with little background knowledge more so than in other fields. When a software developer needs to make a piece of software for a client, they often need to explain technical aspects of the project so clients know why certain features can or cannot be added. It is especially useful when clients are angry because a feature is difficult to fix. The definitions assignment was a good exercise in how to clearly and concisely define a technical word in terms that anyone should be able to understand.

I chose ‘cache’ as my word to define because I felt that it is a term that many people hear about but they do not actually know what it is. In reality, caching is more confusing than how I defined it in my definition. The definition only gave the general idea of what a cache is and how caching works in computers. I particularly liked the expanded definition part of the assignment. I thought it was interesting to think of specific techniques that can be used to help clarify what a term is.

I found peer reviewing Eric’s paper to be somewhat difficult. Although I think that it may just have been difficult because it was very well-written to begin with. I found that I was hunting for mistakes or places that needed improvement that I otherwise would not have noticed. For this reason, I felt that it was an important exercise in my ability to be critical and attentive to detail.

I found that Eric’s review was very helpful for creating a better final copy of my definitions. The suggestions he made did not take a very long time to make. I felt that he was clear in his criticisms and supportive in his suggestions.

Overall, this unit has been an interesting experience for me. I have not taken an English class since I was in first year (I am in seventh year now) so it has been a while since I have needed to specifically focus on my writing ability. I think that my writing style is sufficient for most purposes but often needs cleaning up. For this reason I think that I will benefit a lot from the peer reviews in this course. Since starting the BCS program I have found that I rarely need to do essays or other written assignments. I think that this class will be a good place for me to work on my communication skills. A skill that is important in software development but not emphasized in the computer science courses here at UBC.

JoshMacDonald_definitions_revised

http://engl301.arts.ubc.ca/2017/02/01/assignment-13-peer-review-for-joshua-macdonald/

In English 301, I will be studying the principles of written communication in business and other professional contexts. There are four units in English 301.

Unit 1 will focus on business correspondence and explore themes like audience, tone, clarity and presentation. In Unit 2 we will be designing and submitting a formal report proposal to our writing teams. Unit 3 will focus on resume writing and job application skills.  Finally, in Unit 4 we will be submitting a final report.

For me, I hope to gain some practice in how to effectively communicate with different audiences. I think that the feedback on my written assignments that the professor and other students give me will be instructive for how I communicate with others in a professional setting.

A common topic in software development classes is how to communicate technical subjects with non-technical clients. Talking to a client about specific technical aspects of a programs implementation might not be helpful for them. At the same time, oversimplifying technical details might be unhelpful as well as patronizing to the client. Unit 1 sounds like it will be instructive on this topic when we are studying how audience affects our writing.

As a co-op student, I always welcome more advice on how to apply to jobs and convey myself in resume and cover letters. I appreciate that this course will be using Linked-in, which is very relevant and useful for young professionals. More generally, I appreciate this class overall is aimed at useful writing skills that almost everyone can expect to encounter when we leave university and enter the “real world.”