To

From
Date
Subject

Jared Grogan
Tim Jacobs
December 15, 2016
Performance Review Memo

Introduction
The English 3050 course, Technical Communications I: Reports aims to prepare students
for the tasks of reading, writing, and designing technical documents. Since technical
documents are not limited to just textual information, the importance of formatting and visual
elements of design, such as graphics or figures are emphasized in the course as well.
TechComm@TechTown is a recent addition to the 3050 curriculum and helps students gain
real-world experience by producing technical documents for a real business entity as part of
the third major course project.
ENG3050 explores the field of technical communication by focusing on four main learning
outcomes: writing and designing, reading and analyzing, researching and documenting,
and using technology and media. These outcomes tie directly to expectations of employers
and others in a professional setting and help to prepare students for real-world scenarios in
which they will need to produce such material. Throughout the course, I personally applied
these outcomes to each of the project I worked on and all of the materials that I produced,
The writing and designing outcome focuses mainly on the proper use of grammar,
mechanics, style and document design for technical documents. The reading and analyzing
objective focuses on the importance of reading, analyzing, and evaluating technical
documents for their use of design and their intended audiences. The researching and
documenting outcome highlights the importance of and the procedures for designing and
conducting primary and secondary research to use as sources for technical documents.
Finally, the objective of using technology and media explores different modern technologies
that can be effectively used in the development of technical documents.
In addition to aligning with the course objectives set aside by the English department, this
course also aligns itself well with the pillars of the Honors College, which made it a great
choice for me to perform my service learning requirement. The pillars of Community,
Service, Research, and Career were all met by parts of this course, and were
well-represented in many of the projects, but the third project dealing with TechTown
encompassed them all and was thus the primary focus of my service learning experience.
The following memo will be an overview and self-evaluation of my performance in the class
and and justifications for how well I feel I achieved the learning outcomes that were expected
of me. I will proceed by providing an overview of each major course project and highlighting
how their process and completion assisted in my completion of learning outcomes as well as
representing the Honors College pillars and goals. The evaluations will take into account not
only my performance as an individual, but also my collaborative course experiences.

Performance Review
Individual Performance
The first project for this course dealt with preparing application materials for a job posting in
our field, including a resume and cover letter. After researching different positions and
company information, I chose a position with Chrysler for a powertrain engineering internship.
The technical nature of this job aligned with my background and was thus a good choice. I
had an existing resume, but I initially had difficulty with length requirements. The first
workshop focused on the writing and designing outcome of the course and consisted of a
redesign of my resume by attempting to eliminate or restructure content to be more effective.
After completing the second and third workshops, I was able to gain a better understanding
of reader-centered strategies by reading and analyzing my application materials and their
audience. I used this information to eliminate content that was irrelevant in my resume.
Specifically, I was able to use persuasive

strategies, such as presenting evidence of my

qualifications by presenting examples of past experiences and presenting myself as a partner
by highlighting my positive attitude toward Chrysler products and practices.
In the second project involving creating a wikiHow article, I chose to write an article
instructing readers how to install and use a simple C compiler program. This project also
helped me to meet the learning outcomes of the course. In the initial writing and designing
of my instruction set for producing a first draft, I largely tried to incorporate techniques
addressed in the first project. The first workshop of the project involved critiquing the
instruction set and reading and analyzing it to better address the target audience. I found
that I needed to incorporate a broader scope than in the first project, as I intended for my
instructions to be usable by a large audience. By researching and documenting materials
related to wikiHow standards and practices, I was better able to adhere to the expectations of
the community, which ultimately ensured my article was accepted. The use of technology
and media was very prevalent in this project, as the usability testing was performed using
computer software and wikiHow collaborators contributed remotely on the website to help
improve the materials.

Collaborative Performance
While I feel I made significant improvements in my individual work, I also feel that I made
more improvement overall in my collaborative performance. In ENG3060 and many other
courses throughout my academic career, I have volunteered for or been placed in leadership
roles, but the group I was responsible for this course for Project 3 was the largest to date, and
thus posed unique challenges. I constantly strive for ways to improve my rapport with my
team members and establishing this with a group of five other people proved challenging.
However, with the use of skills emphasized in this course, we were able to produce useful
collaborative material while making a largely successful effort to minimize conflicts and
inefficiencies.
The third course project was the main content of this course and is indeed the reason for the
TechComm@TechTown title, as the project involved working with the TechTown startup,
CarePRN. My team was responsible for producing a report consisting of recommendations
for improving the companys website, specifically the Home and Media pages. This project

excelled in being a capstone for the course, as it applied all of the concepts, strategies, and
learning objectives of the course.
The writing and designing outcome was represented in all of our correspondences and other
materials produced for CarePRN, other teams, and you, the instructor. Examples of these
included our Project 3A, the writing and research plan, which used memo formatting and
design to inform you and Jason about our plans for the project. Reading and analyzing was
also an important part of the process for the project. With the project being focused on
redesign, it was important to read the webpage content and analyze the effectiveness of not
only page content, but also the layout. This leads into the researching and documenting
portion, which accounted for the body of our project. By designing a research plan to
produce effective redesign recommendations, we were able to make use of primary research
in the form of competitor benchmarking analysis as well as secondary research into published
best practices. Finally, the use of technology and media was critical to this project. By using
Google Docs as a collaborative platform, our group was able to effectively communicate and
collaborate to produce effective technical documents.
I elected to enroll in this course not only for the value of its contents to my future as a
professional, but also for the strong representation of the Honors College Pillars which made
it an ideal candidate for Service Learning. First, as CarePRN is located at TechTown in
Detroit, there is a strong sense of community. The fact that CarePRN will be launching their
services first in the metro Detroit enhances this case. Second, CarePRN provides a valuable
service to the area to not only offer care to those in need, but also to provide medical
workers in the area with employment. Third, the importance of research was a significant part
of the project, as it provided the entire basis for our report and findings. Finally, this project
and course overall helped address career goals by allowing me to work directly with a real
business in a real work environment to apply my skills and gain critical experience.

Conclusion
Overall, I feel my performance was very strong in this course and that I was able to meet all of
the learning objectives without issue. As I had already taken ENG3060, the successor to this
course, previously, I was familiarized with many of the core concepts present in this course.
That being said, I do still feel that the activities and projects of this course helped me to
improve many of my existing skills and develop a few new ones as well. Furthermore, this
course provided me with many lessons and strategies as well as some interesting findings.
Chief among these for me was the importance of maintaining a visible workspace. By using
PBWorks wiki and creating individual as well as group pages to contain all work produced for
the course, I was able to readily look back at previous work to reflect and make consistent
improvements. I feel this process of consistent reflection and improvement is critical to
developing any skill. Additionally, I found that organization is critical to efficient group work.
By using a shared Google Drive, our group was able to easily track progress and collaborate
as needed without help and whenever was convenient for them. Therefore, I do feel very
strongly that the work I produced as part of the course not only fulfilled the learning objectives
for the course, but helped me to strengthen my application of the fundamentals of the Honors

College. Moving forward, I will continue to support the efforts of CarePRN by keeping in
contact with you and Jason and lending my time and skills when and where possible.