During this unit I finally did the inevitable: I created a LinkedIn profile. It seemed as though I was the last person in the world to make one, as I was immediately fielding connection requests from former employers, professors, and classmates alike. Being on LinkedIn is just like having an online, interactive resume, and overall I enjoyed the process of putting it together.

A screenshot of what part of my LinkedIn profile looks like.

The feedback that I received was very constructive; I took the time to reorganize my profile and include skills that were less common, like my knowledge of the phonetic alphabet. Some skills seem more relevant than others, but you never know what an employer may be looking for.

The formal report came into focus during this unit, and at first I was not sure about what topic to explore. Eventually I landed on the topic of campus blood drives; they tend to receive a great response online, but a lower turnout at the event itself. I decided to investigate potential methods of increasing the number of donors at future events. I was proud of the formal report proposal that I wrote; I took my time writing and editing it, and the feedback I received on my peer review reflected that. The only concrete suggestion given by my classmate was to “determine the feasibility of extending the duration of each blood drive.” I took this into account and made a minor change to the document, but otherwise kept things much the same. My next step is to start collecting primary data, and I’m excited to get started — and stay on track!

When editing my colleague’s report proposal, I realized the importance of editing. It is crucial for a proposal to be concise, yet informative; the reader should be able to find all the necessary facts without having to scan through for the information. I suggested that my partner fine tune his proposal by reorganizing it slightly and providing more information about the project itself. I was very interested in the topic that he had chosen to explore, which is incredibly important as well – all the editing in the world won’t help if the topic is not worth pursuing.

Peer Review of My Proposal

Peer Review of Ben Chow’s Proposal

Updated Report proposal ENGL 301

I can’t believe that today is February 1st and the first unit of Technical Writing is already over! We have covered a lot of ground in the month since term began. The major assignment of unit one was to write three different definitions of a relatively complex term from our area of academic expertise. Being a Political Science major, I chose to define the term “critical theory.” I soon discovered that the assignment was not as simple as I had initially thought. It was difficult to explain the term for a non-expert audience, especially because critical theory is so deeply bound to other theories and concepts in Political Science. Creating a concise definition that would adequately describe what the term meant was certainly a challenge.

My initial definition was fine, but needed some improvement. I was fortunate to receive good constructive criticism on my assignment from my teammate JM, which you can access here. He suggested that my definition had a good base but had room for improvement, particularly in terms of making it more accessible for a non-expert audience. To do this I simply added more content and context to the definition, making it clearer for the reader how critical theory functions as a theory. I also labelled the image that I had selected to ensure that the reader understood its relevance to the topic. Through doing this, I learned that making a piece of writing simpler to read is the best way to reach a larger audience and properly communicate the writer’s purpose.

When critiquing JM’s work, I focused on the relevance of the content he had included in his definition. While he suggested that I expand on my definition further, I suggested that he cut fairly large pieces of his. Though his work was overall very strong, the definition lost focus somewhat towards the end. It was interesting to look at the assignment from a reader’s perspective as it helped me to understand what the audience was looking for.

Link to JM’s Evaluation

Link to Revised Definitions