My web folio has been built to highlight my skills and accomplishments that will help me achieve my career goals as well as give professionals in my network a clear snapshot of what I am able to bring to the table.
To more easily navigate my web folio, please refer to my storyboard for an organizational overview.
Working through my Web Folio project has proven to be much more valuable to me than I initially thought. I quickly realized how helpful it could be to highlight my career and certain past works and experience; and how to showcase this to different employers in my future career. The larger barrier that I had to overcome was how to verbalize what I have completed in my career thus far. After doing this, I can more clearly see what I need to do to “complete” the next steps in my career, and move to a position where my web folio or online presence is even more professional.
I’ve mentioned before that the web folio project was a foreign and fear-inducing experience at first; but as I worked through the course and then onto the beginning steps of the project itself, I realized how easy it was and how it would help me increase marketability and create a professional online presence. Each page of my web folio represents an important area of my career that I would not have thought to add together if it had not been for this course.
My learning curve in technical writing assignments has had both strong and weak points .This has given me more confidence in my writing because I was able to analyze these in my classmates work, and well as in my classmates peer reviews of my work.
The assignments where I completed my best work and received better marks was during my peer reviews and unit reflections. This makes total sense to me because these are the areas where I felt the most passionate, and in turn I was able to create meaningful peer reviews and reflections for my classmates.Truly, I have never found a more effective learning process in my years as a student and I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to learn this about myself. I felt I gained the most value while completing my memorandums and business letters because I recognize the value of communication in business and life. These seemingly small portions of your career I believe can have the greatest impact, and though I had to improve upon these with each assignment, I believe that my understanding of my audience has improved tenfold. The LinkedIn portion of the course was increasingly important to me than memos and business letters because it is a modern and practical application to use the skills developed in this course; not to mention that it was the most fun. I learning quickly how to market myself and choose the correct audience to showcase what I can bring to the table. Lastly, although I do not know my mark, my web folio has proven to be a medium for my career that I did not know would be so valuable. At first I didn’t understand why a “web folio” would be appropriate for my career, but after having the finished product in front of me, did I see what a great, cohesive product it could be for my career and future employers. The web folio creation process made me expand my skill set by creating a greater online presence and marketability; something I seemed really scary at the start of the course.
The areas of ENGL 301 where my learning process took longer to more time to develop fully was during my causal report writing process. Luckily, I picked a topic that I am very passionate about and it was much easier to present a finished product that I was proud of. This speaks to the practicality of the assignment; had it not been for our ability to pick our own “career” driven report topic, I feel that I would have struggled more to achieve my desired result. Secondly, historically I have had good attention to detail in my works, but for ENGL 301 these abilities were put to the test. I needed to be extremely diligent in creating products that were without error, in terms of grammar, structure, audience, tone, and attitude. My writing ability is great when I need it to teach a concept, but to make the assignment easy for the reader, that was something that I really had to work on.
I have learned a ton of skills from my own writing and especially from my classmates’ peer reviews of my work; these strengths will continue to support me in my career in roles such as a Sustainability Analyst. Being able to reflect effectively on your work is very important to grow and keep learning. The memorandum’s, as well as business letters in this course have been invaluable; they have helped give me a solid background to create correspondence for specific audiences. Our work on LinkedIn has given a practical platform to express my career. Working on my ability to create formal reports helped me gain more experience completing research and writing about topics that are important to me. This is an area that I truly struggle with and it allowed me to brake many barriers. Being able to distinguish writing with you attitude, I believe, is something that I would not have figured out for a long time and I am very thankful for having the opportunity to learn it now. This will support my career by giving my contacts an increased ability to respond and they will be more engaged in my writing. The opportunity to peer review my classmates work benefited my work tenfold; I am going to continue this habit into my career so that I can increase my abilities faster. Lastly, my web folio project brought everything together, organizing my professional life I like never imagined so I can keep improving upon this in the future.
The research process was difficult at first because I wasn’t able to find sources that provided the correct perspective that I wanted my report to focus on. The sources that I found were abundant with information luckily; something I have found to be very rare when searching for specific information. I think that what helped me find this information was because I am actually very interested in NPS and determining the future landscape of the customer service industry. Completing my primary research was the most fun. I learned that customers were much more inclined to compete a walk out interview and give survey data if they had a positive experience.
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 3.1 Writing with You Attitude
The practice that I have received when writing with the ‘right attitude’ in my assignments is what I value the most in this entire course. I see the direct application of this technique in everyday writing, everywhere. Organizing my formal report draft was very challenging and rewarding; I definitely had to break down barriers on how I usually construct research reports.
Learning to write with the right attitude and audience in mind, was the most interesting part of unit three. Inherently I speak very formally and I had to learn to use a more informal tone in certain situations. This stood out to me because I am able to use these lessons immediately in my professional career in contacting different professionals and writing business emails. I have competed surveys in the past, although I learned the most from my formal report because the survey questions were designed with the end result in mind which is something that is completely new to me. Finding the proper visuals was easy, I would never have thought to include graphics before I had learned that it is more appropriate to do so for my intended audience. I’ve learned how to effectively structure my report, despite the report having many sections that need extremely clear headings and content. In lesson 3:1 I learned to initiate my search for a job posting by basing my application package on a job posting. I can’t wait to complete my application package because it will help me find internships that I am applying for currently.
Writing my peer review for Eric Hsu was my second most rewarding lesson from this course. I believe that the peer review assignments and peer review process have really solidified the lessons in this course because you actually get to look out for all of the important aspects of the assignment and try and find them in your partner’s work. This truly helps me understand why I am completing these assignments and I can more effectively prevent these mistakes in my own work in the future.
Thank you for taking the time to examine my reflection on unit three, you can contact me at Rickbryant.ls@outlook.com with any questions.
Richard Bryant, ENGL 301 Technical Writing
The chronology and scope of unit two assignments was extremely effective in teaching the steps in creating a report proposal, outline, and LinkedIn profile. I enjoyed creating our formal report outline significantly because we are able to tackle an issue that is extremely relevant to my professional life, and it is one that I care about immensely. Working through these assignments has given me a greater understanding and appreciation for my intended audience, writing formal scope, assignment purpose, report methods, writing tone, and the depth of information given to the reader.
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 2,1 Formal Report Proposal
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 2.2 LinkedIn Best Practices Memorandum
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 2.2 LinkedIn Profile Peer Review
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 2.3 Formal Report Outline
Creating a professional social media network is one of the most exciting assignments I have ever carried out. LinkedIn is an amazing platform that I will use for the rest of my life because of the enormous utility it possesses. Creating each section, critically analyzing my strengths, and marketing myself to the world was really enlightening. Having this professional network allows you to truly organize your career and sets direction for your efforts in the future. Now that I have completed this assignment, I feel much for confident in what I want to accomplish. I feel that the skills I learned in creating, and communicating my profile to others will add to all my future assignments because I will be able to better articulate myself to peers and clients. Reviewing Travis’s LinkedIn Profile taught me a great deal about communicating clearly, effective structure, and including only relevant information. From Travis’s peer review of my LinkedIn profile I realize that I may have missed out on giving my profile viewers additional details on what my duties were in the roles that I have lead previously.
Brainstorming my report proposal and outline was a great learning experience since I haven’t done assignments like this in the past. Once I found my problem that I wanted to investigate and solve by recommending a solution. The section that taught me the most was creating an actionable research plan, more specifically devising research topics by using the problem tree, because now this has given me vision of my end goal that I can work toward. I feel very confident with the progress of my report up to this point because my report includes sufficient information in each section, each section is clear and logically structured, and the right questions have been asked due to my problem tree. I feel that the assignment was very clear in its expectations allowing me to effectively gather the right information to create a concise report.
I don’t have any questions about how the assignments will tie, other than that I am curious how our job application package will tie in with the formal report. Like I said earlier the assignments are logical and clear in their direction. The assignments for my formal report draft and the formal report final product appear straight forward enough. I believe that these extensions on what we have learned will be logical and give us a fantastic understanding of what a formal report demands of us in a professional setting.
My peer review for Travis Gritter’s report proposal taught we how to use active voice effectively, and how to give clear, concise, and an appropriate amount of information. Travis’s report also taught me the importance of having a greater degree of emphasis on the causes behind the report problem because this will give the reader a deeper understanding on the importance of the problem in real life context.
I have learned that my writing, across assignments, gives sufficient detail on the purpose of my report and scope of the actions I will carry out to complete the report effectively. I have also learned that my writing style and level of detail could improve to help my reader follow the report. My writing team have given me many critiques that have improved my writing. First, I must express my qualifications to a higher degree in my formal report proposal so that my reader understands how I am involved with my reports problem. Secondly, I need to include more detail to supplement my experience and skills relevant to my LinkedIn profile. Lastly, if I give illustrations earlier in the report, the reader will be given a product that is more easily understood. I have learned that I need to give more detail under my experiences and in my writing style so that I may give a better understanding to my readers.
Being able to give a peer review to another member of my writing team has given me another perspective on technical writing that I haven’t considered before. This perspective is that of identifying my team members’ strengths and weaknesses in their writing. Looking for ways to improve others writing is very interesting, I am able to use these techniques to improve my own writing and I can view my writing more objectively and critically.
Thank you for taking the time to examine my reflection on unit two, you can contact me at Rickbryant.ls@outlook.com with any questions.
Richard Bryant, ENGL 301 Technical Writing
The definitions assignment turned out to be a great learning experience where I was able to realize awareness of my audience, use different levels of detail in my writing, and give my readers a better understanding of the material by conveying my point with accuracy.
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 1.3 Definitions
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 1.3 Peer Review of Definitions
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 Application Letter
I decided to choose a topic that makes use of many economic factors as well as a topic that needs more recognition and understanding for professionals who may overlook the concepts strengths and weaknesses. In my original writing, I used less detail than I am comfortable with; I commonly include too much information for fear of leaving any information out. I included information expressing the importance of the subject to relevant careers paths and industries. I also made sure that I did not use jargon or biased information so not to confuse the reader. For my expanded definition, I decided to answer the most relevant questions that my audience will want and need to understand about my topic. I clarified the applications, misconceptions, context, and background of my topic.
I tend to apply what I learn to a practical application so that I gain a deeper understanding, therefore this was one of my biggest concerns while reading my peers article. During my peer review for Travis Gritter, my first impression was that of awe in his ability to explain intricate details extremely well. Although as a layman, I felt that this detail did overwhelm my learning style. I decided that the purpose, audience, and organization of the authors work was second to none and that it deserved special recognition. My final impression of Travis’ work is effective communication and clarity.
While editing my original writing, I improved upon my attention to detail in style and citations, as well as the more effective structure to promote clarity for my audience. I agreed with, and decided to follow Travis’ critique on style, citation use, organization, and visuals location. His suggestions will directly increase my writings ability to effectively communicate.
I learned that my writing style is strong, but needs improvement to increase clarity for my readers. An example being the location of the visual explanatory strategy in my work. Travis’ writing style gave me insight into what strong explanatory and detail oriented writing ought to look like.
Revised Definitions
Richard Bryant ENGL 301 1.3 Definitions Peer Revised.docx
Peer Review – Travis Gritter
http://engl301.arts.ubc.ca/2017/02/02/assignment-13-review-for-rick-bryant/
These are my invitations to my prospective writing team members!
Professional Writing Team Request Email Richard Bryant (Travis Gritter)
Professional Writing Team Request Email Richard Bryant (Josh Macdonald)
Professional Writing Team Request Email Richard Bryant (Eric Hsu)
Hello everyone,
I have distributed a memorandum summarizing my writing team Application Letter. The appropriate parties have been notified, please find my application letter attached.
happy blogging english family 🙂