Overall Reflection: My self assessment
This course has been an interesting experience for me. I’ve never taken an online course before, and the material we covered is fairly non-traditional in my opinion, so there was a lot of confusion and a bit of trial and error with assignments I found. Despite this, I think I have succeeded quite well in the course, and have really learned some new technical writing skills from the different writing assignments. That being said, I’d like to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses for assignments and the learning process, and comment on the skills this course has given me or been honed can be applicable to my career.
For the assignments, I think that my greatest weaknesses were editing/proofreading, and the “You” attitude. In peer reviews and assessments from my instructor, it has been repeatedly noted that I need to proofread my documents for grammatical, sentence, or spelling errors. This has always been a problem with my writing, as I tend not to reread my work after completing something as often as I should. Having peer review in this course was invaluable since it really helped with getting me to proofread my assignments. Over the four months in this course, my proofreading has greatly improved compared to the beginning, and I am more careful with spelling and grammar, as well as sentence structure. I have also had trouble with the “You” attitude, and generally I’ve never really written a document that is tailored towards the reader’s needs. I tend to focus more on giving the information, and as a result the document becomes more impersonal and less applicable to the reader. I think that I have gotten better with this during the course, but it is definitely something I need to work on in the future.
As for my strengths in the assignments, it has been repeatedly noted in peer reviews that I use appropriate tone depending on the assignment, and my sentences and paragraphs are appropriate lengths. Both of these are important for technical writing, as a professional and friendly tone makes something easier to read. Shorter sentences are particularly important in documents online, as it makes it easier for the reader as they go through it.
In the learning process, I definitely think that the major weakness for me was time management. This is my first online course, and I’m more used to the traditional lecture type of setting. With lectures, you are constantly seeing the content each week, so it easier to remind yourself about what needs to be done and what deadlines need to be met. With this online course, you access dates and finish assignments on your own time, and nothing is reminding you about the upcoming documents you may need to complete. This was a major difficulty for me, and I even was late with some assignments as a result. However, as the term went on, I became more vigilant; I periodically checked the website on upcoming projects, planned my time around doing them, and made sure to send something on time. This has really improved my time management and enhanced my learning experience.
As for strengths during this process, my co-op and volunteer experiences have really taught me a lot about team dynamics and teamwork in completing tasks. As a result, I found working in a group throughout the course to quite doable. Contacting my group members and planning out who would peer review wasn’t a big deal for me. As well, I found my communication skills really helped with contacting my instructor and my peers, as well as with people I interviewed for the formal report. This communication allowed me to finish projects on time and understand what I needed to do for assignments very well.
This course has really helped improve my technical writing abilities and communication. This is very important for the type of work that i want to go into, mainly research and development in polymer science. Learning to write with the right tone, how to structure reports and correspondence, and writing with the reader in mind is valuable in a research setting, where you need to share data and work closely with your peers. This course has also helped me with being able to organize myself without being micromanaged. Often in a lab, you are on your won, and being self reliant is a desirable trait, and this course has really improved that for me.
After this course, I feel very good about my technical writing and organization abilities, and I also have improved my LinkedIn and created a web folio to highlight my skills and myself. I have learned more than I expected for this course, and I’m pleased that I took it. I eagerly look forward to applying what I’ve learned here to the rest of my degree, and my blossoming career.
