Ian's Web Folio

Objective self assessment is an important skill for people to master.  Identifying strengths allows one to understand what they can most easily excel at, while identifying weaknesses allows one to identify areas where they need to spend the most time and effort in order to improve.

For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with keeping my writing concise and I knew coming into the course that this was something I needed to focus on improving. Luckily, the students who I formed a writing team with were good at keeping their writing concise, and I learned a lot from reading their writing. Even as the course comes to an end, I still have the tendency to be overly wordy. However, I am much more conscious of correcting this while editing my own work, and I plan to keep working hard in the future at getting my point across in less words.

I consider organization to be the main strength of my writing. Before writing (whether it be a short blog post or long paper), I always make sure to establish a clear outline that will present the parts in a logical order that creates good flow. In terms of learning, I consider my main strength to be my work ethic and attention to detail. I am not one to set a certain amount of time to complete a given assignment. Instead, I keep working until I believe I understand all the concepts and have produced the best work possible.

The parts of the course that I got the most out of were learning to write peer reviews and learning to write with the “you-attitude”. A major career goal of mine is to enter a managerial position within a mining company once I gain the necessary knowledge and experience. Reviewing the work of others is an important component of being a manager, and doing this in a respectful tone that considers the writers point of view can contribute to positive employee morale.

Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Patterson for creating a dynamic and practical writing course that has contributed to my personal, academic, and professional growth.

It is amazing how fast time can go. I remember reading the course schedule at the beginning of September thinking that creating my Web Folio was such a distant task. Now, I have completed the entire course and am finishing up my Web Folio.

To create my Web Folio, I chose to modify my original English 301 blog. When I was first setting up my blog at the start of September, I was overwhelmed by the various editing tools and features the site provides. However, by working with it throughout the course, I have become comfortable with carrying out tasks such as inserting and re-ordering pages and adding hyperlinks and pictures. Thus, creating a layout for my Web Folio did not prove to be a difficult task.

Creating each page was an enjoyable experience because revisiting and editing my old assignments allowed me to see the progression in my writing throughout the course. I noticed that as the course progressed, I began writing  pieces with better style and less grammatical errors in a shorter amount of time than at the beginning of the course. This is a testament to how the course has increased my writing skill and writing confidence.

The page I am most proud of is my application page. Although I have written cover letters and resumes in the past, the course textbook and peer review process have given me ideas and strategies that allowed me to produce a cover letter and resume of much better quality than before. I have always been a career focused individual, and I am excited to see how my new skills in writing to potential employers will help me in landing future jobs.

Overall, I was happy to put the Web Folio together because it showcases the hard work and learning that was central to my experience in English 301.

Putting together my formal report draft was a challenging but rewarding experience. Although I have written many reports during my university degree, the formal report is unlike any of the reports I have written before. Up until this point, the reports I have written have either involved  literature reviews using the library and  internet or reporting on laboratory results. The formal report, however, involved carefully planning real world research to investigate a problem in an organization or place, and using the results to develop realistic solutions. I enjoyed working on the issue of the overcrowded nature of UBC’s fitness facility, a problem I have noticed since I first arrived at the university.

The most challenging part of the process for me was organizing and conducting a primary research plan. It was important to ensure that observations were systematic, accurate, and detailed. In addition, it was important that the surveys and interviews I conducted were thorough in the sense that they provide enough information to write a 12-15 page report, but that they were not too time consuming for the people giving up their time to take them. Once my data was collected, I spent a significant amount of time organizing and analyzing it before writing the report, so the actual writing was easier and took less time than expected. I was always conscious to ensure that my writing was based on the data and not biased towards ideas I had formed before analyzing the data.

I am glad  I had previous practice at writing peer reviews, as this was the most challenging one yet. This is not only because of the length and complexity of the document, but also because the formal report is worth a significant portion of our grade so I wanted to be  sure I gave through and meaningful feedback to Nicolas’s work. I found that doing an initial read through of the entire document  was useful before analyzing each section in detail. One of the aspects of Nicolas’s work that impressed me was the way he broke up longer sections into subsections. I found this enhanced the readability, and is something I will be implementing when I revise my report.

Unit 2 was an important unit because it involved the brainstorming and planning of a major component of the course ( formal report) and learning how to network using LinkedIn. I found the LinkedIn section of the unit extremely useful. This past summer, before the course began, I set up a LinkedIn profile. I found the summary section the most difficult to write, as it is important to keep it succinct while including enough important professional and personal information to entice the reader to view the rest of your profile. At the time, I thought my profile was sufficient. But through the peer review and best practices exercises in this course,  I learned many ways to improve my profile. Essentially, a LinkedIn profile should contain the same amount of information as a resume, except you have the opportunity to make it  more powerful than a resume (for example, being endorsed or adding media). I am now confident in my ability to effectively network using LinkedIn.

Brainstorming a topic and creating an outline for my formal report was a lengthy process. I found it difficult to meet the criteria of finding a topic that applied to my recent experience while not being too large or too small to be covered in a 12-15 page report. Eventually, I arrived at the topic of reducing unnecessary wait times at UBC’s Birdcoop Fitness Center. In writing my proposal, I found it helpful to make sure that everything I included was appropriate for the audience and that it related to the problem. I am confident that if I stick to my writing schedule my investigation will develop into a report that outlines the causes of the long wait times and proposes solutions on how to reduce them.

I learned a lot through the formal report peer review process. Carefully evaluating another persons work  with the intention of providing useful suggestions for improvement is an important skill, and something that I have not done much of in the past. I was impressed with my partner Nicolas’s proposal. In particular, I was impressed with how intimately his scope was related to his proposed solution. This made me realize that I needed to improve my scope, and in fact Nicolas pointed this out in his review of my proposal.

Reading my teams forum allows me to study the specifics of other people’s writing. I find the quality of writing impressive, however this does not surprise me for an upper level technical writing class. The concise language my teammates use to deliver their point impresses me, and I am working on improving this is my own writing. In addition, I have discovered that I sometimes incorrectly use nouns and verbs, so studying my teammates use of these has helped me be more conscious of getting nouns and verbs correct.

Enclosure:

301 Ian Betts Report Proposal-October 28,2016

Ian Betts Report Review for Nicolas Peressin- October 28,2016

Nicolas Peressin Report Review for Ian Betts- October 28,2016

The most recent assignment in English 301 involved writing three definitions (parenthetical, sentence, and expanded) for a relatively complex term within our profession or field of study. The assignment also involved peer reviewing the work of a member from our writing team. Overall I enjoyed the process; I enjoyed defining a term with the goal of making it understandable for someone with no knowledge of my field of study, and I enjoyed reading not only the work of the person I was reviewing, but the work of others in the class who come from a variety of fields of study.

The original writing was more challenging and time consuming than I thought. First off, picking a term was harder than expected. It was important to find a term that was both not too basic so that it was hard to expand on and not too complex so that it was difficult to define without using other technical language. Even though I found a term (block caving) that fit these criteria, I still found myself initially writing as if the audience had some knowledge of geologic jargon. I had to go back and simplify my document.

The peer review process was helpful in two ways. Firstly, it allowed me to get better at providing constructive feedback for others work, something I have not done much of in the past. Secondly, it taught me a lot about my own writing. When editing my definitions I took most of Gustavo’s suggestions (improving formatting, noting which expansion strategy my figure relates to, and changing my “Analysis of Parts” heading to “Operating Principle”, which is more appropriate. The only suggestion I did not take is that I should make the history section more interesting. The reasoning behind this is that I do believe I outlined the importance of block caving in the past and present, and that this is all that is necessary for the sake of a definition.

One aspect of Gustavo’s definition that impresses me is how concise his writing is. Conciseness is something I hope to improve upon in the units to come.

Gustavo’s Review of My Definition

IanBettsdefinitionsoctober2,2016