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Research Process for Formal Report
This process was not as difficult as I had expected initially. Compared to research papers, in which searching for books in the library and articles on the web are very common forms of research, the research done for this formal report was a lot less time consuming a lot more enjoyable. My research primarily consisted of surveys, which I greatly enjoy composing. Figuring out the right questions was not very difficult as my report proposal laid out three important sections, reliance on transit, demand for more bus stops and nighttime safety at UBC and my questions focused primarily on these topics. Getting survey respondents was also a simple task as my friends who are UBC students assisted me in asking their friends to do my survey, allowing a much faster spread. The most difficult task in the research process was finding the right person in AMS Safewalk to speak with about campus safety at nighttime, as most of the associates were not aware about this topic.
Organizing Formal Report
The formal report outline, which was done earlier in a previous assignment, significantly made the task of organizing my formal report easier. On my formal report draft, I included the headings that I listed on the formal report outline allowing readers to easily find a specific section of interest. The most time consuming part of organization was determining which graphs, obtained from my survey, to use in which subheading of the data section. Throughout this process, I learned to always design the outline of the report first with specific headings and subheadings as knowing the research topics and the overall writing process becomes much more simple.
Writing Formal Report DraftÂ
Writing the formal report draft was certainly a time consuming process but not as difficult as I had expected before starting. The formal report proposal and the progress report done in previous assignments were very helpful in the writing of my introduction. My proposal had covered the Background, Statement of Problem and Scope of Inquiry sections of the introduction while the progress report outlined the purpose and significance of the report. Since data was still being collected at the time of writing my first draft, the data section of my draft was incomplete without the full set of graphs which I planned to include. Even though I had an idea of the results from the survey, writing the conclusion was the most difficult due to not having the full set of illustrations to refer to. I learned that writing a report should be done in a step by step manner focusing on a few sections per day rather than writing the entire report in one day. Writing a few sections a day allows full focus and dedication into those sections resulting in stronger arguments and supporting details.
Peer Review Process
While reading Yingying’s report, I noticed that she had her full set of illustrations included in her draft and as a result, she wrote a very strong conclusion in her report. I realized the importance of having a complete data section with multiple graphs and images to refer to in the conclusion. There were also several sections in her report where she had used bullet points rather than paragraphs to state her points and I learned that my writing can be a lot more concise as I work on my final draft. The overall process was more time consuming compared to other peer reviews done for previous assignments due to reading a longer document, however, the checklist provided made the process significantly less time consuming than I had expected.