Rowan Harris' Webfolio

A UBC student athlete pursuing an undergraduate degree in biology

Final Reflections

This technical writing course, ENGL 301, began as an elective course but has been extremely enjoyable and informative, allowing me to develop many different writing skills. By working independently and in collaboration with Dr. Paterson or my writing team, Wise Words, I have prepared proposals, reports, formal correspondence, and online communications – necessities for the professional world. This final reflection will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of my writings and learning process, as well as highlight my future goals.

My strengths

Of all of the assignments completed over this course, writing the formal report was the most comfortable as the formal tone utilized in this assignment was required in my previous writing experience. By focusing primarily on conveying information concisely, writing with a formal tone has become one of my strengths. Writing with this style is useful when preparing documents required as a biology student or in the research placement I am applying to.

Another strength that I have developed is self and peer revision. Thinking critically about the work produced by my Wise Words teammates has progressed my ability to provide constructive feedback to both my peers and myself. Being able to objectively review written work is critical within both professional and everyday life.

My Weaknesses

Collaboration with my peers and instructor over this course helped to highlight my weaknesses in my professional writing. Creating a relationship with the reader and writing with a ‘You-Attitude’ was particularly challenging when completing these assignments. Both of these styles were very new to me and required me to always be aware of my tone. This increased the completion time of each assignment as I became more aware of each sentence that I wrote.

Future Goals

The skills that I have learned through this technical writing course will be transferable to all aspects of my life; both professional and everyday. Whether it be applications to research placements, applications to graduate school, communications with my coach, or emails to professors, my writing will be stronger and more professional. This will help me to acquire the necessary information or documents much quicker.

In addition to improved writing skills, the completion of this course has provided me with a complete application package, webfolio, and LinkedIn profile. As I enter into my final year of studies, these documents will be very useful as I begin to search for employment opportunities. I’m excited to continue to apply what I have learned in this class into my professional life and future career.

Reflections on my Webfolio

Creating a Webfolio 

As I have created several blogs over this past semester and have familiarized myself with the UBC blog layout, I thought that creating a webfolio for the final assignment would be simple but this proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. While selecting the design and layout was initially simple, figuring out how to create several different pages where I could post separate content was challenging. Each post would appear on the blog page instead of the ‘Best Works’ or ‘Home’ page. This issue is not quite resolved but trying to find a solution has let me explore the UBC blog platform and will hopefully allow me to make my final project more integrated and aesthetically pleasing.

 

Determining an audience

The purpose of this portfolio is to highlight my academic abilities, good character, and competence for a research abroad placement position. By keeping the target audience of my Webfolio the same as my application package, I hope to maintain the same tone throughout all of my writings. Choosing the same target audience was a simple decision as I have practiced this formal but friendly tone throughout the semester. Ensuring that is it present through all of my small writings has become easier but I must continue to make revisions.

Reviewing my works

While preparing the work that I have completed over the semester I was impressed at how much my writing has improved. It is evident that since the assignments in Unit 2 where we were introduced to the ‘You-Attitude’, the tone and style of my writing is much more professional. Ensuring that my writing creates a positive relationship with the reader will surely help any future work that I embark on in academia, sports, or volunteer work.

Past Reflections

Below are the reflections compiled from the first three units of this technical writing course, organized by reverse chronological order. Hopefully these reflections will provide insight to my learning progress throughout the semester.

Reflection on Unit Three Writings

Formal Report Draft

Compiling information for this research project has proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. The nature of distributing the student survey through social media has resulted in a biased representation of the student population as many survey participants are my peers in varsity programs. Performing a complete analysis would require a larger collection of data through more survey participants as well as a larger scope of problems. Organizing the report has not been challenging as it follows the same format as previous reports I have written.

Peer Review

Reviewing Sitao’s formal report draft highlighted several areas of improvement within my own report. Sitao clearly outlined a solution to an inefficiency within UBC’s food services with specific requirements for the proposed application. These specifics demonstrated the importance of detail within my own proposed solution. Overall, the peer review process has proved to be very useful for my own report, and hopefully my suggestions will be helpful for my peer Sitao. I am eager to complete my own formal report and read the reports of my peers.

Below you will find my formal report draft and the peer review of my formal report.

Formal Report Draft: 301_Rowan Harris_Formal Draft

Peer Review of Formal Report Draft

Reflections of Unit Two Writings

Reflection on the LinkedIn Profile

Previous to this unit’s assignment, I had not been part of the professional networking platform LinkedIn.  The process of creating a LinkedIn profile was challenging due to the split of my professional experiences between pursuing an undergraduate degree in biology, and competing for the Canadian National Field Hockey Team.

By reflecting critically upon my professional image, reading through the “Top Ten Best Practices for Using LinkedIn” written by my peers, and looking differently at my recent field hockey accomplishments and experiences I created my own professional LinkedIn profile.

Reflection on the creation of a formal report and outline

Given the amount of freedom in the instructions and possibility of a large scope of the project, brainstorming topics for the formal report was a daunting task. Often, I become caught up in extravagant ideas and concepts which are not feasible given the resources and access to information available through this course, so choosing a topic that was both interesting and challenging as well as feasible proved to be harder than expected.  I am currently on track with my chosen schedule and I do not currently have any questions in regards to how to put together the report. Learning from my peers has been very useful while formulating an outline and research plan for the formal report. While reviewing my peers’ work I find that I am more careful about the details in order to ensure that any criticism given is thought out and analyzed. This in turn allows me to catch small revisions in my own work.

Reflection on the peer review process

Assignments in this unit have pushed my abilities as a writer and have reinforced the importance of proper verb tense. Through the peer review processes I have been challenged to write concise and direct proposals. Thoughtful and insightful comments from my peers have provided excellent constructive criticism which has made my writing stronger. I have learned how to write to a select audience and communicate all of the necessary information concisely and directly. I look forward to working with my group members as we complete our formal reports.

Below you will find my formal report proposal and the peer review of my proposal.

Formal Report Proposal: 301_Rowan Harris_Formal Report Proposal

Peer Review Proposal: Amanda Burke’s Peer Review of my Formal Report

Reflections of Unit One Writings

Assignments in this unit have focused on building relationships with our group members and writing more professionally. Outlined below are reflections of the writing, peer review, and editing stages for the process of defining a technical term in our field of study.

Stage 1: Writing

Initially, it was difficult to separate the definition of my term agroecosystem into different expansion strategies. As many of the strategies covered similar components of the term, it was difficult write a complete explanation in each section without repetition.

Using non-technical terms and distinguishing between technical and common knowledge terms was harder than anticipated through the initial editing. For example, I assumed that non-technical readers know terms such as ecosystem and organism which are essential for defining agroecosystem, but this might not be the case.

Stage 2: Peer Review

Through the process of peer review, I realized that there were organizational requirements for the assignment that I had previously overlooked.  When giving feedback to my group member Sitao Lu, I realized that I had not included a title or a figure description in my post. As I wanted to give constructive and critical feedback, I was forced to pay extra attention to detail. Consultation with the ‘Technical Communication’ textbook was essential at this stage to ensure a professional document. This extra attention to detail for all aspects of writing is why peer review is so important in composition.

The suggestions made by my peer Sitao Lu were extremely helpful when I reviewed by own definition. For example, with the conversion of the document from word to the blog page, my image shrunk in size and was hard to see. This was critical to the readability of my definition and was a fix that was made possible by peer review.

Stage 3: Editing

Reading my peer’s definition gave me a better idea of what is important for someone trying to understand a new term. Through my own realizations and suggestions by my group member Sitao to reorganize the content of my definition, I was able to rewrite parts of my paper to make it more comprehensible to the reader.

In addition to my own realizations, having a second opinion about the structure of my definition was very helpful. For example, Sitao pointed out that I had started each section of my expanded definition with a new part of the definition. This meant that I had not included a complete definition of my term when I had initially introduced it. Sitao’s review of my work allowed me to have a document which was much more clear and professional.

I have learned many different thing through all three stages of this writing process; the writing, the peer review, and the editing. Completion of this project has significantly improved my writing capacity and ability to create a polished article. It has also shown me the importance of peer review so that I can address issues such as sentence structure and content organization. I look forward to the next peer review opportunity!

Below I have attached the link to the peer review of my definition by Sitao Lu and my updated definition.

Sitao Lu’s Peer Review

301_Rowan Harris_Edited Definitions

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