Monthly Archives: October 2015

Unit two consisted of more writing assignments compared to unit one. I was given the chance to practice many different styles of professional writing such as a proposal, an outline and a progress report in the form of a memorandum for the formal report. In addition, I also updated my LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn Profile

I remember creating a LinkedIn profile when I first started studying computer science in 2013 because I was told that having a presence on LinkedIn is very important for students who are searching for internships. My profile only contained brief point form descriptions of my experiences. I left it in that state for almost two years because I did not feel having a LinkedIn profile was something that could help me connect with others. When I think of professional connections, it usually means exchanging emails. However, while I was searching for my first coop job last fall, I realized that many employers wanted us to fill in our LinkedIn profile link on the application. Also, during networking events, people would often ask about connecting on LinkedIn.

While I was updating my LinkedIn profile for the assignment, I started researching about the best practices regarding LinkedIn profiles because I did not know what a professional profile should look like and what details should be included. Writing the memo on the ten best practices helped me a lot with the assignment. The most important points I learned was getting a custom url, writing a short and concise summary, having a catchy outline and only including relevant experiences.

I hope after updating my profile, recruiters will be able to search for me more easily and reach out to me.

Report Proposal & Outline

The process of brainstorming and coming up with a suitable topic was a bit challenging in the beginning as I did not know where I could gather the data and how I could write a 12-15 page report. It is my first time writing an assignment that is longer than 6 pages. After reading the instructor’s blog and advice about drawing upon our own experiences, I started thinking about the problems I encountered during my previous internship. I decided to write about the feasibility of implementing a corporate volunteer program at Collabware, the company I did my previous coop at. I am fortunate because after discussing the details with my manager, she was happy to help me out by encouraging the employees to fill out my survey and answer my interview questions.

Formal Report Investigation

I started getting a better idea of how all the small assignments we are completing will guide us through the process of completing a formal report. From my previous experiences on writing essays, I simply followed the format the professors’ wanted. However, for this assignment, it will be different for everyone as the reports we are writing focuses on different things. The outline gave me a better idea what the layout of my report will look like. The progress report gave me the opportunity to plan out how I will carry out the research and put it together as a whole. The timeline is extremely useful for reminding me what tasks I should be doing each day to make sure I do not end up rushing to finish the report a couple days before it is due.

Peer Reviewing Daniel’s Proposal

I peer reviewed Daniel’s proposal on making hackathons friendlier for people with different technological backgrounds. The topic is very interesting because it is something I can relate to since I have attended many hackathons. I also experienced the situation where I have felt inferior because everyone else is more knowledgeable than me and there is very little support for beginners. I am impressed by the technological experience he has. I am looking forward to reading his final report because I want to learn about how to improve the experience of hackathons for all attendees. This will be extremely useful for me when I am planning similar events.

I noticed that Daniel is quite clear and concise when it comes to writing. This is something I can definitely learn from and think about when I am writing. The suggestions I gave were regarding minor issues such as avoiding abbreviations and giving more details for the scope section.

Peer Review Process

I learned more about my writing through the peer reviews. Daniel pointed out to me that I needed to improve the problem statement and proposed solution sections in my proposal. My statement of the problem did not explicitly state what problem(s) I am aiming to address. My proposed solution lacked details about the implementation. I think I made some improvement on making my writing less wordy in unit two. However, I need to make sure that I add enough details for the reader to understand what issues I am trying to address.

Peer reviewing Luke’s LinkedIn profile was challenging because we had to start from scratch. There was no template provided for us this time. I started to think about what I would want to see on the profile if I was a recruiter. I decided to organize the review by discussing what I thought was written well in each section and some minor improvements that I thought may be helpful. After carefully reading each section, I also applied some of the knowledge from researching about LinkedIn best practices and gave some suggestions on sections that could be added such as recommendations and projects.

One of the most important things I learned this unit through peer reviewing is the amount of time I should spend on each assignment. I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of English assignments we have each week because I am not use to writing this much. I tend to spend a lot of time on each assignment because I am worried that it is not good enough and there may be some mistakes I made but did not catch. I end up spending a lot of time thinking before writing and reading what I wrote over and over again. While it is important to treat writing assignments seriously and to proofread it to catch errors, I started to realize that we are all humans and we are not perfect. That is reason we have peer reviews. The peer reviews are there to help us improve our writing. I will start to have more confidence in my writing and spend a reasonable amount of time on the assignments. I look forward to writing more for the final report as it is a topic that I am passionate about.

301 Lisa Wong Formal Report Proposal Revised

Link to peer review of my proposal by Daniel Gipps

Definitions Draft

The criteria for the definitions assignment was to define a complex term in our professional field to someone who comes from a different background. I chose to define “cookies” because it is a word that comes up often when browsing the web and a couple of my friends have asked me what cookies are. When I tried explaining cookies to them, the feedback I received was that they were more confused because I used additional technical terms in my definition. The first thought that came to my mind was that I need to imagine explaining cookies to myself when I was not a computer science student. I focused on using simple words. After reading the textbook, I learned what a sentence, a parenthetical and an expanded definition consists of. After reading the example provided in the textbook, I realized it was easy to identify the purpose of each section because they were labelled with meaningful headings. Therefore, when I started writing, I wrote headings for each of my paragraphs. Not only are the headings helpful for the user, they also help me as a writer stay focused on the purpose of each paragraph.

Receiving a Peer Review

My teammate Jenny reviewed my definitions. After reading the peer review she gave me, I appreciated her honest feedback. I liked how Jenny gave me positive feedback on the parts that she thought I wrote well and the parts that need improvement. She pointed out that my sentence definition was too long. She suggested a shorter sentence definition to make the readers more engaged. I am aware that I tend to be quite wordy when I write. However, after editing my draft, I did not realize it was too long. After reading it again, I can see how others may find it too long because I put too much detail in the definition. I edited the sentence by taking out the details on what information a cookie can contain. This is information that should be in the expanded definition.

Jenny also noted that my visuals may be confusing for readers who only scan the document. For example, they may wonder why there is a cookie (pastry) in the visual. She suggested using an abstract figure. It was a difficult decision because I chose the visuals to show the readers the difference between browsing with cookies and without. In the end, I decided to add another visual in the example section of my expanded definition.

Giving a Peer Review

It was my first time giving someone’s writing a formal review. I found it challenging trying to create a template and give feedback in a way such that it does not sound too critical. Dr. Paterson’s blog mentioned that knowing what we are looking for before reading the document will make our review both positive and critical. I used this technique and wrote down my initial impressions. I noticed that Jenny uses less words when describing her term (computer drivers). This is something I can incorporate in my writing to make it more engaging. After reading it multiple times, I gave honest feedback on what I thought was written well and pointed out the typos/grammatical errors I found. I hope Jenny finds my suggestions useful.

In most of my previous English classes, only the professor gives feedback on the writing when it is being evaluated and there was no opportunity to make the necessary changes after receiving a mark. I enjoy the writing process of this class because we have the opportunity to improve our writing assignments after it is peer reviewed. I hope my writing skills will improve as the course progresses.

Revised Cookies Definitions

Peer Review by Jenny Lian