Reflection

 ENC1102 Was a course that I didn’t know what to expect when enrolling in the class. I
knew I would be doing more research-based writing, which in fact did scare me a little because I
have never written a research paper prior to this class. However, I never thought I would have
had so much growth in such a short amount of time with something that was so new to me. I
can look back at the progress I’ve made throughout the course and see how much I have grown
as a writer and as a researcher.
For the student learning outcomes, I feel like I have been able to apply most of them in
my work throughout the semester. For outcome number one it says “students will be able to
analyze and synthesize complex tasks in ways that demonstrate an understanding of the
situated in inter-textual nature of writing and research”. I connected greatly with the
comprehension that I received from the article “Confessions of an ACA-FAN: Confronting the
Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century (Part One)”. Prior to
reading this article, I was never familiar with the phrase participatory culture. Throughout the
course, this was an article that I kept coming back to because it helped me understand that
participatory culture is where people can feel comfortable enough to share their opinions on a
platform. I was able to connect participatory culture in my study of a sports online community
because of how I was able to comprehend what participatory culture is. 
In learning outcome number two it says, “students will engage in a recursive, inquiry-
based writing and research process that is meaningful for a specific community.” When starting
this class we were told that we needed to find an online community to talk about the writing and
communication that takes place within it. I struggled for a while trying to find a community that I
could relate to and feel like I could use for the class. I believe for this outcome I was greatly
helped by the discussions that we did towards the beginning of the semester. For example,
discussion two where we needed to find a community that we wanted to study and see how
writing and communication took place within the community. This discussion really helped me
narrow down my options as to what community best suits me in this course. After this
discussion, I was able to gather the primary sources that I wanted to address within my
research proposal. I originally in my research proposal didn’t connect the effect of writing
communication as well as I should have. However, I feel that towards the middle of the
semester where we worked on our annotated bibliography, I started to use the feedback that I
received from my research proposal to connect how effective the writing and communication are
within my community.
Outcome number three addresses that “students will be able to interpret the research
findings in order to produce arguments that matter to specific communities by addressing real-
world exigencies”. I believe this is the outcome that I least developed in this course. I say this
because I didn’t really address the exigencies within my online community until I reach my
annotated bibliography. However, I believe that I was able to pinpoint a couple of exigencies
that I noticed for example how in the community GolfWRX you must sign up as a member to be
able to comment on posts, discussions, and open forums. As well as realizing that an external
factor for the online community to have communication and conversation there needs to be a
level of trust established so that the writers feel comfortable in sharing their opinions on this
platform.
The final outcome which states that “Students will examine their own conceptions of
writing and research in response to their inquiry, reading, and writing throughout the course.” I’ll
look back at the writing that I did in the first quarter of the semester. I see that I wasn’t going as
in-depth as I should’ve been. I also wasn’t using correct terminology however; I did see room for
improvement. I knew that I was just starting, and I could work to improve my writing and my
research as I continued throughout the course. In regard to my research, I have seen a
tremendous amount of growth and confidence in myself throughout the course. As I previously
mentioned when I first got to the course, I had never written a research paper before. I was not
sure what to expect. I did struggle in the beginning on finding the correct types of research and
being able to connect the research to the prompts which was how “writing and communication
are effective within the online community.” I completed my first major assignment which was the
research proposal and received great critical feedback on how I needed to go in more depth on
connecting my sources to the research proposal question. Between the first major assignment
and the second one which was the annotated bibliography, I was able to start linking my
sources to the question at hand. I was able to do this because of the discussions that took
place, for example, discussion 5.  This discussion helped me to focus on just one aspect of the
writing that takes place within my online community and how it is effective. Continuing through
the course I was able to look back at the feedback I received for the research proposal and the
annotated bibliography and was able to use that to complete my final major assignment which
was the analytical research essay. This is where I saw the most growth. I started to see how I
was more confident and comfortable in being able to make the connection between my research
and the effectiveness that the writing and communication has on the community. 
Looking back at all of the assignments that I did, from the short responses to the major
assignments I was able to see how much I learned, and I grew from the start of the semester to
the end. I didn’t know what I was going into originally. I was fearful that I was not going to be
able to write a proper research essay. However, I learned that there are multiple steps that one
mistake to be able to complete your research essay, and once you’ve taken the steps and feel
comfortable and confident in yourself that’s when you will be able to write a good research
essay.