The most difficult part of writing the report draft was gathering primary research. I had contacted quite a few people for interviews but, as it is the summer time, I got very few responses. In order to create a cohesive report, I think the opinions of those who are more knowledgeable in faculty workings and administrative issues are very important. As students, we have no idea what goes behind the scenes and so I wanted to explore that aspect of online courses. Luckily I received a response after the due date of the draft report and so I will be adding the information into the final report.
Creating and distributing the survey also proved to be a little difficult. You have to make sure you write the correct types of questions to get all of the information you need. You also need to make sure you don’t make the survey too long as that can deter your respondents from answering. As this was my first time ever writing a survey, I learned this the hard way and later realized was that I had made a couple mistakes and couldn’t gather all the information I had exactly wanted. I also had trouble getting people to take my survey. I had expected to have little responses as that is usually the case for surveys, but I was honestly expecting to get more replies than the 15 I got. However, I still think my data was quite useful. Most of the respondents had experience with online courses and all of them had taken all of the core computer science courses. This means they have formed an opinion about the course and have been able to logically access whether that course would be good for online learning or not.
The actual process of writing the report was not too difficult for me as we had already formed the outline and a plan of action. However, I did end up changing most of my outline as I organized all my information and accessed what I did and did not have. Creating the figures was also not too difficult as Google Sheets provides analytics of your results for you and I was able to use those for my report.
The task of reviewing my peer was pretty interesting. I had used the Microsoft Word review options in previous writing courses and I felt that it helped me to better edit my peer’s report. Rather than just loosely describing what I think should be changed, I was able to highlight it directly on the document and provide comments. Doing this also helped me to write my peer review as all the edits were already there and I just had to summarize what I found.
Attached: Formal Report Draft