This document reflects on Kylie Jacobsen's experience in a technical writing class. Some key lessons and projects are summarized:
1) Group projects taught collaboration skills and different group roles like combining documents and meeting guidelines.
2) Writing instructions effectively for usability tests improved with practice and making language more user-friendly.
3) Presentation skills improved by keeping visual aids simple and not cluttered to effectively convey an app created for the class.
4) A resume project helped learn proper resume formatting and writing a targeted cover letter, which led to finding an internship.
2. COLLABORATION
In this class, group
work was a huge
part of your success.
Starting in Unit 2, we
were placed into
groups and began
writing our formal
proposal for a project
we were creating to
solve a problem on
campus.
My group chose to create an app to solve the problem of
student laziness, stress and un-organization. From
working in groups, we learned how to explain the
instructions of our project rather than just marketing it to
our audience, which is what we were mentally geared to
at first.
We also learned there are different roles throughout
a group and working collaboratively in a group
means you have a mature process. I served as the
team leader and combined our documents to meet
project guidelines before submitting each project.
3. WRITING EFFECTIVELY
Learning to write effectively for specific audiences was one of the main course
outcomes that I feel I have grown on.
During the usability test,
many draft’s were written to
find the words that were most
simple yet explained the task
at hand the most effectively.
The goal was to give a potential
user a set of instructions that
they could use to complete a
task on our app. After running
through it with classmates, a
few changes were made in
order to make it more user
friendly and we tried to write
the instructions the same way
that we would speak it.
4. CHOOSING CORRECT
TECHNOLOGIES
For our final project in the class, we were given the task to create a
presentation to show off our final creation of the app we made.
We learned how to keep our presentations simple, and not cluttered by the
“Rule of Thirds.” Simple fonts, pictures and bullet points are generally the most
effective way to make your presentation easy on the eyes. Visual aids should
aid your presentation, not take it over.
Options included videos or slideshows, and
we chose to create a powerpoint presentation
with visual aids of the screens in our app
throughout to show the audience the way that
our app would be used.
5. THE RESUME PROJECT
After the helpful critique from classmates, I realized I
still had some re-arranging to do. I changed up my
header and moved my “Education” section up to the
top. I also added my projected graduation date and
major. The assignment was to find a job description
and write a cover letter for it.
This was not only a lot of fun, but actually very
beneficial because I ended up finding an internship
that was available to apply for during my search.
Writing the cover letter to fit this job and cleaning up
my resume was the perfect assignment just in time
to find this opportunity. I feel this was definitely one
of the more beneficial projects we did in this class
because it is important for each one of us to not only
have a resume, but make sure we are aware of what
it contains and how it is set up so that it is all done
properly and professionally.
I had originally thought
that my resume was
pretty good, or “good
enough.”
I also learned more of what a
cover letter was, before I was
more unsure of how to
structure it and what it should
contain.
6. DOES YOUR CONTEXT FIT YOUR
AUDIENCE?
Through the usability test and also
from writing a cultural memo I have
learned that by making your wording
and navigation throughout our app as
simple as possible, it is much easier
for people throughout many cultures
to use. We learned about how people
from different countries and cultures
communicate and what their priorities
are on a day-to-day basis or even
just naturally, and made edits to our
app based on a German culture.
This helped me understand
that it is important to
understand different
“languages” and ways of
living to incorporate many
different cultures into your
projects.
7. TIPS FOR OTHER STUDENTS
• Go to class and take notes, because you will appreciate
that you have them when you’re looking back while
working on a project.
• Put your best effort into each project, because the
following projects will rely on the work you have done in
the previous.
• Put yourself in the reader’s position, and test your projects
over and over to make sure that they are as simple and
usable as possible.
8. OVERALL PERSONAL
GROWTH/CONCLUSION
Course outcomes include
learning to create technical
documents of varied genre’s,
critically evaluate and choose
technologies that are
appropriate for certain
projects and grow the ability
to analyze the audience and
purpose of each technical
project.
Through technical writing, I have learned that every project
has specific guidelines, audiences, purposes, and needs.
I believe that through this class, I have gained the
greater understanding of those outcomes through
group work and day to day note taking in class
through instructor presentations. I saw how to
communicate to certain audiences when making
our app through the cultural memo, how to
analyze what you want your project to become
overall through a formal proposal and how visual
aids can enhance your presentation or be
distracting.
