Writing Development

I have seen some improvement in my writing skills this semester. One of the areas that I improved on
was being able to set the tone for my assignments, whether I wanted to use a formal or informal tone
this course gave me the tools I needed to develop tone in my assignments. Another area that I improved
was implementing the design features into my writing to make my documents look more visually
appealing and easier to read. I used text boxes to emphasize the different sections and I used a rule
direct attention to the region where the steps for the instructions began. Another area of improvement
was learning how to write for different types of readers. For the instructions, I learned how to write for
more resistant readers. For the white paper, I learned how to write for a large audience, and for the
workplace correspondence assignments, I learned how to write for smaller audiences.

Course Goals

The two goals that I set out at the beginning of this class were to improve my writing skills and fulfill my
major requirement for technical communication. The first goal, as outlined above was met with success.
I think that writing these three assignments and going through the process of first drafts, peer review,
second draft, instructor revisions, and then making a portfolio is a great way to build good writing skills. I
was also able to meet my second goal. Learning about how to effectively write technical communication
is a valuable skill for working in computer science and I think that I will use a lot of the skills I learned
here in my future career.

Assignments.

The assignment that I am most proud of is the white paper and this was also my favorite assignment to
work on. I am most proud of this assignment because I really liked the subject; it was really interesting
to research this subject and I read a lot of academic papers and news articles to find information on this
subject. I also really liked this assignment because I thought that the layout was very nice and it had a
nice flow. If I was going to add an assignment to this course it would be a how-to video. I think this
example of technical communication is easier to digest than a set of instructions because it is easier to
watch a video than read something. It is also very relevant to the world today because of how accessible
things like YouTube are and how easy it is to record a video with the abundance of cameras on
smartphones. If I could edit an assignment in this course it would be the portfolio, I would change it so
that 3 versions of each assignment were uploaded, one before peer review, one after peer review, and
then the final draft after revisions were made based on instructor recommendations. I feel like this
would capture more of the writing development that occurred throughout the course. I also would not
leave track changes on in the uploaded versions because it doesn’t display some of the changes
correctly like adding images or formatting features.