I think that my writing skills in this course have vastly improved.
Before I enrolled in this
class, I did not have much experience in technical writing. I knew how to write lab reports, but
that was the extent of my formal or technical writing. When I read the book, listened to lectures,
and reviewed power points, there was a lot of information that I had never considered before.
The projects allowed me to apply my newfound knowledge and explore what I excelled in and
what needed work. My ability to appropriately structure a document and utilize different design
styles has improved, especially demonstrated by my instructions and usability assignment.
Before this assignment, I probably would have just written a long paragraph of pointers with a
numbers list of instructions. However, upon writing my instructions and usability assignment,
my design style has vastly changed. My use of colors, different font styles and sizes, pictures,
and heading dividers has shown me that my skills significantly improved from what I would
have originally written.
At the beginning of the semester, my goals for this class were to improve my grammar
skills, think critically instead of just repeating facts, and organize my thoughts. I believe that I
did meet my goal, indicated by my assignments. At the start, there were some assignments I
struggled with first; however, I think that the changes I made in this portfolio project reflect the
improvements in my writing skills. The workplace correspondence and story sphere assignments
challenged me to think more critically and develop my solutions. Throughout this class, my main
struggle was the organization of my thoughts. However, through the peer reviews, teacher
reviews, assignment prep sheets, and portfolio revisions, I have organized my ideas better. My
sentences flow better and convey my ideas more than before I took this class. While I still would
like to practice my technical writing skills and further improve my organization skills, I have
vastly improved and achieved my goal.
I am most proud of my Workplace Correspondence assignment because it allowed me to
see what areas in my technical writing I needed to work on. Since I did not need to make many
edits to my other assignments, there was little room for me to improve. However, the workplace
correspondence required much more revising, which allowed me to practice my technical writing
skills. Thomas Edison once said, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t
work”, and that is exactly what my workplace correspondence assignment helped me do. So I am
very proud of my ability to reapply and improve my skills. If I could add any assignment to this
course, it would be some sort of video project with a script, similar to the story sphere project. If
I could edit any assignment in this course, it would be the report packet. Although I am not the
most tech-savvy individual, I really enjoyed the creativity of the story sphere. I think more
assignments that resemble the story sphere project would be very enjoyable and allow the
students to express themselves while taking advantage of the technology we have.
