Self-Assessment

Doing a self-assessment is always an uncomfortable process for me, however I do feel like there are a few areas that I can highlight.

Going into this course, I knew my writing skills needed some refining; especially in the areas of grammar and wordiness. While I think this course strengthened my grammar overall, I don’t feel like love for adding too many words really improved. Although I am fully aware of this bad habit, it is one I will have to continue to finesse.

For me, the assignments seemed quite daunting at times, however, I really ended up appreciating how they were strategically scheduled. For example, the progress report ensured I was on top of my vision for the formal report, and the outline we produced was so helpful for me to see how my report would be structured. I have learned that I am a very visual learner. I love lists and checking things off as I go, so to write out every detail of an assignment and be able to go back and use it as a reference point was invaluable to my writing process this term.

I will no doubt take what I have learned in ENGL 301 with me in both my education and my career as I am so confident now in developing correspondence that is professional yet effective, writing documents that follow specific technical guidelines and creating blogs. These are all skills that will ensure my success going forward!

The Process of Creating a Web Folio

Creating a Web Folio enabled me to see how far I have come as a technical writer, and to realize how much more comfortable I am in navigating a platform that I had no experience in using before ENGL 301. Setting up my student blog caused me a great amount of stress, however, creating my Web Folio was a fun process and went relatively smoothly. I think keeping all of my assignments well organized throughout the term, revising my work as I received feedback and taking pride in presenting a professional yet friendly Web Folio really helped. I will no doubt take these tools with me into my final year at UBC and my professional career.

Unit 3 was another interesting section to work on for ENGL 301, and I finally felt like I was getting the hang of technical writing. Although I’m sure there are still many areas that I can improve upon, I did feel significantly more comfortable and confident in my writing ability.

Researching, Organizing and Writing Formal Report Draft

This assignment was no small task, but I was looking forward to diving into researching material for my formal report on Implementing Pedestrian Safety on the Arbutus Greenway.  I read some really interesting articles, blogs and websites highlighting the increase in e-bike and e-scooter use in Vancouver, and world-wide. While this didn’t surprise me, it provided me with the reassurance that I had chosen an important subject.

Along the way, my research produced some interesting sources. One that I found interesting was the design plan of the Arbutus Greenway provided by the City of Vancouver. It included renderings of what the City envisions the final greenway to be. To my surprise, they address one of recommendations that I have in my report – separate pathways for pedestrians and cyclists! While seeing this was in the future plans was great, it did make me realize that my report needed to reiterate the importance of safety measures being implemented now, versus waiting for the final phases to be completed in the next few years.

While writing my draft, I faced a couple of setbacks. One was securing a specific contact at the City of Vancouver who oversees the development of the Arbutus Greenway. However, just yesterday I was finally contacted by the Engineering lead. He provided me with some great information that I can now use in the final version of my report. This was a potential limitation that I had highlighted in my draft, so I am relieved. Another hurdle was developing the survey. Having not used Qualtrics before, I had a tough time with the program. However, just like struggling with the set up of my blog at the beginning of this course, it all takes practice…and patience! Moreover, I was really surprised by how hard it was to develop survey questions, specifically trying to avoid writing leading questions. I have learned about these types of questions being problematic in my Psych courses before, however, having to develop them myself made me understand the issues surrounding them. In the end, I was really excited to see the results of my survey. Unfortunately, I was only able to get responses from twenty-nine people, and I didn’t get respondents within a demographic that I assume are the most likely to use the greenway. However, the results I did collect provided me enough data for a solid argument.

Organizing my report draft was relatively easy because of the outline we were assigned to do beforehand. This was such a great reference to have on hand. I now have a whole new appreciation for headings and subheadings. Using this method made it so much easier for laying out my writing sections. In addition, I now understand how important they are for keeping the reader organized while reviewing the content. If they are confused by the layout and content, this would take away from the message the report is trying to convey.

Peer Review of Formal Report Draft

I reviewed Karolina’s final report draft and was looking forward to doing so because I loved the idea of implementing a navigation app for Metrotown Mall. My review took me significantly longer than I had anticipated, in part because this course has taught me how important my feedback is to the success of her final piece of work, but also because I felt a lot of pressure to provide her with relevant and useful notes. In my previous evaluations, I have been instructed to provide more detail, so I made a conscious effort to do this. However, my worry is that I ended up giving too much. As I have experienced with previous reviews of team members’ work, the reviewing process benefited me as much as Karolina. I was constantly reminded of all the tools I have learned, especially avoiding the pronouns ‘I/you’ and imperatives. I also really appreciate the use of visuals as they provide a deeper understanding of data, therefore, I did recommend she use a few more visual references as they also convey material is a more appealing way. I have seen such an improvement in Karolina’s writing, especially with her grammar and spelling. It’s great to see!

Karolina’s review of my formal report draft was very helpful in highlighting the areas that need strengthening. I wasn’t surprised with her comments about wordiness as this is something I am still struggling with. I also appreciated her note about using transitional sentences more effectively, as well as organizing my visuals differently so that the overall design of the report is more appealing. Her review was written in a very professional yet supportive way, and I look forward to implementing her feedback for my final report.

Overall, Unit 3 was an intense section, however, it was also hugely beneficial as a writer and a reviewer. I’m looking forward to tackling Unit 4 and producing my final report, application package and webfolio.

Throughout Unit 2, I continued to be challenged with refining my technical writing, leaving me surprised at how complex this skill really is and respecting the process even more.

Research Proposal & Peer Review

Our first assignment was to develop a research proposal for a public issue that could benefit from our recommendations for improvement. It was a bit overwhelming as there were so many factors to consider for each section, especially the six areas of inquiry. However, once I determined the problem I wanted to research, I was quite excited about preparing this work as it was a great opportunity to shed light on an issue that I have had for some time – pedestrian safety on the Arbutus Greenway. My writing teammate, Karolina, had a great idea for her proposal (an app for navigating Metrotown Mall), so I really enjoyed doing a peer review on her work. It was such a simple idea, but one that I am shocked hasn’t been implemented yet. Doing the review also reminded me how important the structure and quality of our feedback is for our teammates to present their best work, while also forcing me to look at my own work with a new lens. In addition to reviewing Karolina’s proposal, I actually went through all of the class team pages and skimmed their proposal ideas as well. I thought so many of them were fantastic and I am really excited about reading all of the final reports at the end of the term.

Ten Best Practices for LinkedIn

I found the LinkedIn assignment very interesting. Not only did it force me to analyze my current profile with major scrutiny, it enabled me to look at it from an employer’s perspective. I had very little knowledge of LinkedIn’s functions, and that would have been very obvious to anyone who visited my profile. Researching the best practices provided me with so many options to enhance it, and out of the ten that I included in my memo, I personally have only used two of them. This was very enlightening because I realized I have been limiting myself within my profession due to a lack of effort in building and maintaining a profile that is up to date, utilizing the tools available to enhance it and taking advantage of the networking capabilities it provides. I fully intend to revisit my LinkedIn profile over the coming weeks and apply what I have learned.

Formal Report Outline

The report outline was quite challenging for me as I am notorious for jumping into my assignments across all of my courses without doing an outline. I know this has been a major issue with my writing process, but to be honest, it has been something that I always make excuses for. However, being forced to develop and submit an outline as an assignment was invaluable because it made me realize how beneficial they are. By breaking elements down into sections and then further into subsections, a solid structure provides a clear vision and checklist to stay on track. I can honestly say that going forward, I will always do an outline for my writing assignments at UBC and beyond.

Revising Work

A final reflection for this unit has to be in regards to revising my work. A recurring theme on my evaluation sheet for this unit was ‘more detail’, and I found this comment very insightful. I think trying to tame my ‘wordiness’ has affected providing sufficient detail, so I will continue to work on finding the right balance in my future assignments. Furthermore, going back and tweaking my writing based on peer reviews and instructor feedback has been crucial in my learning and development. I revised four of my assignments in Unit 2, and I actually really enjoyed the process. I touched on this in my reflection for Unit 1, but I really do think that having a second or third set of eyes on a piece of writing is crucial to be a successful writer as we can become blind to the finer details, regardless of our intention to produce a perfect piece of work.

Looking forward to Unit 3!

Original Writing of Term Definitions

When I started Unit 1.3, it didn’t take long for me to realize how complex the process of writing a definition is. We were asked to choose a relatively complex term and write a definition for a non-technical audience. I chose the term Post-Production because it is used in my current profession and I am often asked to explain what it involves to clients and junior team members. As instructed, I wrote three different types of definitions: parenthetical, sentence and expanded. Parenthetical definitions use a clarifying phrase in parentheses, whereas sentence definitions are used to elaborate the term’s meaning even further. Expanded definitions offer the most variety to a writer as many methods can be used, depending on the term. I chose Required Conditions, Examples, Analysis of Parts because I felt that they would be the most successful in conveying the information. In the assignment instructions it said that choosing a situation and an audience to write for was a major component, but I didn’t realize just how crucial they are for producing the most effective definitions.

Peer Review Process

For me, the peer review section of the assignment was the most interesting, revealing so many of my shortcomings. In an earlier assignment, I mentioned that one of my weaknesses is grammar, so to critique someone else’s work (Karolina Atehortua) was quite an uncomfortable process. Two things did help ease this discomfort though. Firstly, keeping personal pronouns like I/you out of my review made it feel more professional and less personal. Secondly, reviewing someone else’s work made me realize that I can actually be useful by tapping into some of my newfound knowledge from the textbook. Receiving my peer review from Karolina also highlighted how a second set of eyes is crucial to the writing process. As writers, I think working on an assignment for a long stretch of time makes us overlook many errors because they no longer stand out. With a peer review, mistakes and suggestions are brought to the foreground, can be corrected and ultimately a better piece of work is produced.

Editing Process

The editing process provided me with a second chance to write a stronger assignment, taking all of Karolina’s positive, critical and constructive feedback into consideration. While she only found minor errors, her comments were very useful. I was able to see mistakes in my APA citations which led me to educating myself further via outside sources. Karolina also flagged my tendency for ‘wordiness’, which I appreciated and am always trying to correct. What I didn’t anticipate in the editing process was how some of the feedback I gave to Karolina carried over to my own revisions. For example, I was more aware of my grammatical errors, the correct use of certain definition types, APA citation guidelines and the overall organization of my assignment.  Overall, this assignment was extremely beneficial and I know I will bring what I learned to my future work.

Thank you.

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