Creating the Web Folio was a good opportunity to look back through all the work I did over the term and assess everything I learned. I was actually surprised at how much content we produced. It did not feel like we did this much throughout the term, but putting it all in one place certainly put it in perspective.

Beyond the opportunity to look back at my work, it also got my brain thinking about the design and content of a future web folio I want to build. Since I am hoping to be an app and web developer, I want to create my own website eventually showcasing my experience and projects.

I have not started this yet as I am still not 100% sure about my career goals and target audience, and I am also waiting to build more of a software portfolio. I am still in the early days of my program and the projects I have to date are quite basic.

Next term I have to start looking into and applying to computer science co-op placements, so I will have to start working on this site soon. Much of the content I wrote today can be a good skeleton for the future site, although much will have to be changed for the context of the jobs I am applying to and the projects I want to showcase.

In fact, I already bought a domain name and hosting service. Now I just need to get started on actually building the site, which I hope to build from scratch as a project in itself, and the content.

Report Writing Process

The hardest part of writing the formal report was the scoping. My original idea for the report was too ambitious and tried to do too much. Throughout the term, I had to scale it down so as to not make it into a full research paper.

This presented both opportunities and challenges. On one hand, it made gathering sources and writing the first draft much more manageable. But on the other hand, it made it difficult to answer the questions I wanted answered without all the research I was initially planning on doing.

Initially, I wanted to use both the experience of the Rockfish Co-op members as well as social movement theory to give recommendations to the co-op on how they can increase community engagement. In the end, however, I opted to just speak to people in the community to find ways of achieving this.

This made me very reliant on stakeholder interviews as the main source for the report. While I was able to schedule some great interviews and hear from key people, it was hard to do this in the timeline given. Had I known from the start how little time I would have to conduct the interviews, I would have changed my methodology for the project.

Dr. Paterson suggested I perform a survey, and ideally I would do one. The main piece of information my report is missing is hearing from the wider co-op membership. However, due to the politics of small-town life, to avoid stepping on toes and setting unrealistic expectations for the report, I opted to not do the survey and instead do targeted interviews.

If this was a report actually commissioned by the Rockfish Co-op, I would ideally interview some more stakeholder and do a full survey of the membership with the backing of the co-op leadership. This is something I may actually recommend the co-op do in the future.

When it came to actually writing the draft report, it was helpful to already have drafted an outline and a progress report. This helped me organize the results of my research and spend more time writing once the interviews were over.

Due to the timing of the draft, at the end of the season when other projects are also due, I was not able to put the amount of time and energy into it as I had hoped. The end result of the draft is far from where I wanted it to be.

But it is certainly a good start to get feedback on and be able to improve on for the final draft.

Peer Review Process

This peer review felt like the culmination of much of what we have learned throughout the term. Given the length of the report and all we have learned, this was the most I spent working on a peer review to date.

It gave me an opportunity to apply much of what I learned through the textbook and the other course materials. I was able to more systematically identify strengths and areas for improvement in my peer’s report. I am also finding that avoiding imperative verbs and applying You-Attitude is coming more natural to me now.

In the past I have had to do a lot of editing for co-workers and these learnings will certainly come in handy in the future.

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