In unit 2, I have mainly learned to prepare for a formal report and make my LinkedIn profile look professional.
Proposal and Outline for Formal Report
The most difficult part to prepare for a formal report was to choose an appropriate topic and appropriately find the scope of question to investigate and write a formal report for it. I always want investigate why people still misuse or overuse antibiotics though public media have repeatedly reported the harm of it. Since recently I heard China almost consumed half of the world’s antibiotics and I have connection in China, I was so ambitious and eager to do a project that were related to China and Canada. However, I did not realize that this assignment was not for a research paper. Instead, it was for a formal report. From the comments from Erika and Matthew, I realized it was too ambitious to do it. Therefore, I have narrowed down the research to local Vancouver area. Also, through what I reviewed Matthew’s proposal, I can see his proposal was more specific than mine, and his proposal clearly showed who it was for. Thinking about the audience was very important no matter what I wrote, so I cleared my mind and decided my target audience were the health providers and health educators. Also, I learned that to write a peer review, I should follow the order of what the author wrote. It would make the author easier to follow and edit it. Moreover, in the first few memo, I did not follow the format what the textbook taught, I have got back to reread the textbook in order to make my future memo look more professional. Often I found my writing was too wordy, so I should write more concisely in the future.
In addition, through writing the research plan and schedule for the formal report, I found the weakness of mine as I found when I wrote the proposal. Originally, I chose both survey and interview as my primary source. However, as I wrote the questions for the survey, I found I did not have to do the interview in order to have those answers. Why not just put the questions on the survey? As well, it would save time. I found at the beginning, I always want to do something big qualitatively and quantitatively, but it turns out that it is not necessary and not suitable. Hence, I decided only using the survey as my primary source. Moreover, I really like the idea of writing a schedule for the formal report. I am not a person who plan well to do things. I believe the compulsory schedule would really help me to finish the survey and formal report on time.
LinkedIn Networking
By reading the tips of networking through LinkedIn from my peers and writing my own tips for it, I have learned so much about how to make a professional LinkedIn profile for best networking. Prior to this assignment, I had very few connection and I did not even have a profile picture. However, after I read what peers wrote the tips of LinkedIn networking and did some research on my own, I just realized the importance of networking through LinkedIn. I have chose the best picture I thought for it and added some essential parts on it. Many employers pose jobs on it and many people get their jobs through LinkedIn. My original connection was around 50, but now my connection has been doubled. I found it is really helpful to expand network through LinkedIn with current LinkedIn connection. For example, I have had previous alumni who currently work in Google and they are on my LinkedIn connection, then I search their network and can successfully add their Google colleagues to my own network. As I expand my network, I expand the topics of articles and news feed that I can read through LinkedIn. It will be a powerful tool for networking if I can use it more smartly in the future.
The link for the updated formal report proposal and peer review are as following:
Formal Report Proposal of Yin Zhou (Maggie)
Peer Review From Matthew Fung for Yin Zhou (Maggie)