Hello World !

In the last week, we have been asked to submit the first draft of our formal report. I found that I learned a lot during researching, producing the formal proposal and peering review.

In this report, I chose a topic that is related to career life for UBC CS students. The computer science program in UBC mainly focuses on academic concepts, and however, IT industries require students to have more coding skills.

When I researched how to solve this conflict between our computer science education and industry needs, many universities’ computer-science education programs face the same challenge as UBC. The conceptual teaching education refers to the traditional lecture educations in many papers. This way of teaching has been widely discussed its drawbacks. The most common solution is to apply a modern teaching method in university courses. In computer-science education, many projected-based courses or collaborating practices with local industries are introduced into universities. Those papers give me some insights to help solve the conflict in UBC, and I found that applying previous knowledge to similar situations is helpful. These papers help me understand this problem in-depth, not only in how serious the conflict is but also in the pros and cons of the most common solution — projected-based courses.

The data collection part is tricky. I plan to provide surveys for both current UBC CS students and previous CS students. However, I only receive few responses at the beginning of data collection. I try to contact my previous classmates and use social media like Facebook to connect with previous students in the CS program.

In peer review, I grouped with Yifan Wang. His report shares a similar topic with me. He is also worried about the CS students’ career life, and his solution is to let CSSS extends their functionality to help students better prepare for their career. In general, Yifan’s work is an outstanding report, and he clearly organized his report into many parts. One drawback in his report is that he did not mention much about his secondary data source. I recommended he include more content about how he analyzes his secondary data source and show the results.

LinkedIn has become one of the major social media in seeking a job and other professional fields. When I researched best LinkedIn practices, I started to think about my own experience in social media. Like other social media, we can put anything about ourselves on LinkedIn, such as our hobbies, education, and previous jobs. Putting various information about us on LinkedIn helps others know us without seeing us in the real world. We connected based on the information we provided. However, some strategies may be helpful to delivering information that we emphasized to our readers. These strategies help us look professional in our areas.

Preparing the proposal and outline helps me understand the procedure to advise formally. The process of counselling and making changes is an art. We have to use limited words to let our readers know how urgent action needs to take. We should state the background and point out the issues and also deeply analyze the problems. We should give a feasible solution and investigation strategies to qualify the possible solution. Without organizing well, we may write a long and confusing report for our readers. In addition, we should always consider who our readers are and think from readers’ perspectives. When I posted my proposal, I made a mistake in clarifying who my reader is. I took Dr. Erika’s advice and researched the internet to figure out who I should write for. In this process, I learnt that targeting my readers is also a critical aspect of stating issues.

In the peer review, I paired with my team member, Cathy Liu. She pointed out that I could rewrite some sentences to improve conciseness, and her advice is helpful since redundant words discourage readers. I also advised her to change her inquiring questions. Instead of stating the general questions about how to solve the problem, questioning the feasibility of her solution will help her get more insight when analyzing her data.

Revised Proposal: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/10/15/proposal-for-determining-the-feasibility-of-providing-new-workshops/

Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/10/18/peer-review-for-research-proposal-for-determining-the-feasibility-of-providing-new-workshops/

Last week, I wrote a technical definition for non-technical audiences. The term that I chose to define is machine learning. Machine learning is a significant and comprehensive topic in computer science. Even experts in computer science spend years studying and analyzing machine learning concepts. It is hard to define it precisely, but avoid getting too much detail to understand. Defining machine learning in a technical context is an invaluable lesson for me and improves my writing. I learned a lot in defining a term, peering review others’ work, and re-edit the definitions.

In the textbook, we learnt the procedure to write a formal sentence definition and extended definition. A sentence definition is an informative sentence to indicate the broader class to which this item belongs, followed by the features that distinguish it from other things in that general class. Sentence definition is powerful in my mind, and it gives all the essential information to know a term without losing conciseness. Sentence definition is helpful to begin a definition, followed by an extended definition. It is pretty like an appetizer before the entree. In the extended definition, I chose to inform the etymology, history, operation principle of machine learning, analyze its parts and visualize it using images.

In the peer-review process, I reviewed Samantha Lee’s work about the definition of a cache. The change in perspective from an author to a reader teach me a lot in writing. In her work, she used many simple ideas to overview the functionality of a cache. She provided many examples to let her readers understand the effectiveness that a cache provides in computing. She also told the drawback of using a cache. I feel that providing enough examples is an excellent strategy to make a technical term less obscure. Also, pointing out both advantages and disadvantages is responsive.

When I re-edited my definitions of machine learning, I took Samantha’s advice about including parenthetical definitions to explain any technical-related words in my extended definition. I learnt that I need to carefully choose the word. As a technical student in university, I can easily assume some knowledge is common sense, but actually, they are not.

Revised Definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/09/30/definitions-of-machine-learning/

Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2021wa/2021/10/03/peer-review-of-definitions-on-machine-learning/

5740 Toronto Rd

Vancouver, BC V6T 1L2

Sep. 19, 2021

Student in ENGL 301

English department, UBC

1873 E Mall #397,

Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1

Dear Student in ENGL 301:

Please consider my application for your professional writing team in ENGL 301 for 2021 winter term 1. I am a fourth-year BCS student and will graduate at the end of this winter session. ENGL 301 is one of the required courses for the BCS program.

As you may notice on the BIO page in my ENGL 301 blog, I was also a previous BA student who graduated in 2019. I majored in economics and mathematics. In my previous program, I took many English and/or writing-based courses and got good marks in these courses, such as WRDS 150, ENGL 110, LLED 200, and ECON 490 (thesis course). I also have much experience in teamwork, for example, CPSC 455, in which course requires us to develop a full-stack web app in four months and write technical documentation for our web app. This experience has given me a practical and in-depth understanding of collaboration and division in writing-based teamwork.

I have worked hard on my professional writing skills. I can work well with others in ENGL 301 and respond to any challenges in writing-based teamwork.

If my background meets your need, please email me any time at younglll2015@gmail.com.

Sincerely yours,

Yang Liu

301_Yang_Liu_Application_Letter