Tag: reflections

This course has been quite an interesting experience for me as I have not taken an English course in over 3 years (aka since first year). Aside from the occasional email or some long answer portions in assignments, I haven’t done a lot of writing. As a result,  my writing was really awkward and felt pretty choppy. I was definitely out of practice and a common mistake I noticed was that my sentences were overly long and had bad grammar. While I think I have improved on both of these, I still have a lot to work on and need a lot more practice.

The main reason I took this course was to improve my technical communication skills.  I knew that one of my weaknesses was writing so I wanted to get more practice at it. I also wanted to get more practice at doing specific types of technical writing like emails, letters, and reports. Those are all types of writing that I might have to do when I’m working as a software developer and I want to sound as professional as possible. In order to do that, I need to get more experience with writing and that is what I was able to do through this course.

As a student, I believe that I am someone who is hard working, organized and time-conscious.  Those are all important qualities to have when working in the software industry as there is a lot of pressure to deliver and finish all your tasks. Being organized helps you to better plan how you want to approach problems and being time-conscious means that you are more likely to deliver what you need to by the deadline. Those types of soft skills, plus the drive to continuously improve upon my technical skills, are what is going to help me to succeed in my future career.

I thought that the process of creating the Web Folio was very fulfilling. It acts as a summary of all the work we did throughout the term and it highlights some of the best pieces that we have written.

I found that creating the Application Package was not too difficult as I have applied to quite a few developer jobs before and so I already had experience creating cover letters. However, I found the resume styles in the textbook to be quite interesting. Usually, we list out our employment/volunteer history and then state the skills we gained through that position. So I decided to follow the alternate version that is in the textbook and group the information explicitly by my skills. While I am not sure which version is better, I thought the two different styles definitely have their own pros and cons and it was interesting to test both out. I also liked the idea of having a Resume page directly on the Web Folio as I think that would make reading my resume more convenient for some readers.  I have also not yet written letters to request references so I found the examples that were provided int he textbook to be quite useful.

Creating the page with all of our best works was also quite interesting as it gave me a chance to look back on the different stuff I wrote and reflect on which I am most proud of.  I also thought that it was good that the pieces we were recommended to feature were all from different units and were also all different types of writing. This provides an even better overview of my writing ability and it shows the reader how I write in different situations.

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

I had already created my Linkedin profile prior to this assignment so I was more focused on editing and updating my information. Linkedin is an amazing tool for all professionals, especially for those who are soon to be graduating or those who are looking for jobs. It has the ability to connect you with others in your industry and can provide opportunities for you at any time. That is why I think it is extremely important to keep it up to date and make sure it is a good representation of who you are as a professional.

I found the process of preparing the proposal, outline, and research plan to be relatively difficult. You begin to realize how many things there are to consider and I was concerned that I was going to miss something important. That is exactly what happened when I was writing the proposal as I missed a couple key points that I had to add in when I was forming my outline and research plan.  In general, I am progressing pretty well with my report but as of right now I feel a bit rushed. I am currently studying for finals so I was not able to give as much thought to the proposal and outline as I wanted. But the course is finishing soon and I will be able to focus a lot more of my attention on the report. After creating the outline and research plan I have a pretty good idea of how this investigation is going to become the Formal Report. Having all these planning stages has definitely helped me to structure my ideas and organize them in a way that will hopefully make a more cohesive formal report.

Through the peer review process, I have learned that while my writing is descriptive it can be wordy. I also struggle with grammar and using the appropriate active/passive voice. I knew those were my weaknesses even before starting this course and as the term progresses I hope to improve upon those aspects. Another big thing I struggle with is wording what I want to say in a clear and concise way. This weakness has become even more apparent to me as I review my peers work as they are able to do this very well. That is also something I want to improve on because being able to communicate your ideas eloquently is such an important skill.

Attached is my Revised Report Proposal

Link to Peer Review of Report Proposal

I thought that working on this exercise provided really valuable experience in writing to many different types of audiences. I know that in the future there will be plenty of times where we have to write to readers who are not in the same field so the perspective I gained from writing the definition and doing the peer review will be useful.

The word I chose is actually a subject that I am very familiar with.  During my internship, I spent a majority of my time trying to improve the scalability of the product I was working on.  I have a lot of practical experience and I have a good understanding of what scalability means but putting it formally into words was actually quite difficult. I found myself having to reference other sources and see how other people defined scalability which turned out to be a really good learning experience. As I was researching, I was able to learn even more about the subject and while I didn’t include that sort of technical information in my definition, I was able to gain an even deeper understanding of scalability.

Giving feedback also proved to be quite interesting. The word my partner choose to define is one that I had never heard of before so I was in the same perspective as a reader who needed to read and understand the definition. The definition was overall very well written and I only had to provide comments on some things I wanted my partner to add to make the definition more clear. Doing this peer feedback also helped me to think about what I needed to do to help a reader who has zero technical knowledge of the subject I am writing about. Even things as simple as properly labeling the diagram or adding the origin of the word could help information click in the reader’s brain.

My partner also provided me with good insight on my writing as he pointed out things that I hadn’t realized while I was writing the definition. I had used some ambiguous vocabulary while defining tolerance of bad scalability and by using his advice, I was able to improve my definition and make the ideas sound more logical. My partner brought up an interesting question regarding what are some characteristics that make a good system scalable. That got me really thinking about how I could explain it in a way that is easy for a non-technical audience to understand. Eventually, I decided to not include it as a good explanation would be too technical and it would be outside the scope of the definition. But it was a really good point and it made me really realize how difficult it is to write to different types of audiences who have differing backgrounds.

Edited Scalability definition
Scalability – Peer Review