Reflection on the Research Process of the Formal Report
The research process of the Formal Report was extremely challenging. As school comes to an end a lot of classes and assignments are due at the same moment and I found it extremely hard to follow up with what I envisioned as my research plan. I ended up having to join some of my research steps together in order to gather as much information as possible.
It was also extremely hard to get people from different faculties to respond to my survey. I had to go out of my way to message people and make sure I had the expected range of responses throughout my platform. Posting on different social media groups of specific faculties also helped the increase in participation. Knowing members inside the EHub definitely helped me gather more information than expected. It was easy to approach them and gather as much of a detailed response as possible. At last participating on the EHub event made me realize how hard it is to run an event and to talk people into coming it. I was able to gather knowledge not only for my report but as for other envisioned future projects. At the end I feel like my efforts paid off and I received a substantial amount of responses from all faculties that I feel accurately portray what is happening to our Entrepreneurship Hub.
Reflection on Organizing the Formal Report
Organizing my report started as an extremely difficult task. I had a hard time producing my outline and coming up with the order of where each information should fall on. After multiple failed attempts I realized that I wanted to include a lot more information than was needed. When I finally broke down my report into 3 sections, intro, data and conclusion, the report started flowing naturally. I usually create an outline before I write my assignments, which makes it extremely easy to do so. This time around however, I was following my proposal in order to come up with an outline and that was not a good idea. I learned how important it is to organize all your data and information before starting to write. Coming up with a table of results also made it easier when coming up with graph placements.
Reflection on Writing Formal Report Draft
Writing the actual formal report was the easiest part of this multistep assignment. When I started writing I thought it would be challenging, but as soon as I opened my proposal and my outline, and I saw how much information I already had, it became easy. My first step was to put all my information together and create graphs for my results. The graphs spoke for themselves, therefore I only had to do a brief explanation on the overall context of the graphs and their meanings. I had done a very detailed proposal, so most of my introduction consisted in joining all my paragraphs into a unit. Proofreading the draft was harder, I constantly felt like words and information were missing. I checked back to what people had been posting and I saw some reports with a clear lack of effort, so that made me less worried. I followed my outline and tried adding as much information as possible in order to get a very good peer review from my peers and add onto what was lacking. In addition to focusing on the coherency of my piece, I have also become conscious of maintaining the “You-Attitude” and avoiding the “Negatives” that we have previously learned. In conclusion, I learned that the writing process is lengthy and difficult. I also learned that the focus on detail and being mindful of my readers are important aspects of the writing process.
Reflection on Peer Review
The peer review process has become easier and easier the more we work on it. Due to the length of the report it this review process was longer than usual, however very straightforward. I decided to use the checklist for guidance, but not as a format for my review. I find it helpful when reviewers give explicit explanations by sections rather than general terms like design, voice and others. The questions prompted me to also consider what I could have done to improve my own draft. It would have been very helpful if I knew about this checklist and used it as a guide for drafting my own report. Overall the peer review process has been a great experience, not only am I looking at to what my peers are writing and their points of views in various issues, as I am learning editing techniques that will be used on my future writing papers.
First Draft: Formal Report EHub Draft