After the first half month, I found this online course way more effective than I imagined: The course structure is strong and organized, the assignments are reasonable and plentiful, and my teammates are responsible and helpful.
Beginning with self introductions and letter of applications, we ended up forming teams and finishing three definitions of professional terms collaboratively. In Assignment 1:3, two things that I found the most helpful are learning from other classmates’ writing and getting peer reviewed by teammates. When drafting assignment 1:3, I paid a lot of attention to the effectiveness of the explanations of ecosystem services. But I failed to successfully define the audience and the situation of the explanations. I specified the audience, but not the situation.
However, although I defined the primary audience as readers who have never heard of this term and readers who have heard of this term but don’t quite understand it, I did not bear the audience that has never heard of the term in mind- there were too many “professional terms” in my assignment.
The other reason for this failure was that I did not specify the situation of this assignment. After the peer review, I edited the situation as an ecology consultant needs to explain the reasons to enhance tree protections to the developer who just bought the land. With this background, I believe that many “professional terms” will make sense.
It is also quite helpful peer reviewing Anh’s work. Because instead of glancing through, I read her work very carefully to give constructive suggestions. I found myself absorbing a lot after carefully reading her work.
I look forward to the coming challenges and assignments!