Portfolio_Reflective Entry

          To begin this semester we were presented with a series of course goals that needed to be addressed and accomplished.  The first of these goals is, “Analyze communication contexts rhetorically by understanding audiences, purposes, and situations.  The second goal was to, “create technical documents that solve problems and improve situations through communication.”  Next goal was to develop the ability to, “write effective technical prose.”  The fourth goal was to, “design convincing and usable documents.” The next goal of the semester was to, “analyze the ethical responsibilities involved in technical communication.” The sixth goal was the need to, “communicate effectively with diverse audiences.” The final goal of the class was to, “collaborate on communication projects.” I will address all of these goals and others that are not listed in this essay.

          The first goal was addressed in almost all of the assignments but most namely it was stressed in the correspondence package and the job letter and resume.  It was of the utmost importance to not only know who you were writing for, but to also take the analysis and use it to tailor your document so that it is easier for your audience to read and understand.  For example when writing the job letter and resume it was very important to get the job add, so that I could get more information on the company, on the job description, and on the employees of the company so that the job letter and the resumes can be made specific for all three.  An example of this is, “I am writing in response to the internship opportunity listed on careerbuilder.com.  I will be an asset to Hatfield Halcomb Inc. because of my strong desire to receive licensure in Texas and my ability to learn new computer drafting programs quickly and efficiently.  I saw on your website that you specialize in Architectural, Interior Design, and Master Planning because of my education because of my education background in each one of these I will be a great asset to your company.  I have had the opportunity to work with people from many different backgrounds ethnically, age, and financially.” By doing a little bit of research on the job and the company I was able to know that the company that they are looking for an employee that wants to eventually receive licensure in the state of Texas and someone that need to be able to learn and adapt to the use of new computer programs.  By expressing my desire to do both of these it shows the company that I have taken a vested interest in learning about the company and it allows me to express my desire to provide what the company is looking for.

          The next goal of learning to, “create technical documents that solve problems and improve situations through communication.” Was addressed in many of the assignments but was very obvious in the claim letter as the goal of the letter was to right a situation in which I had been wronged at one point, and was asking for compensation.  For my claim letter I wrote to a bicycle shop that sold me a bike that was scratched before I bought it.  When asking to improve a situation it is very important that you make it very obvious who you want the situation be improved.  This was done in the letter when I wrote, “I am asking that you replace the frame with one that is not damaged.” I am making it very obvious that I want the company to provide me with a new bike frame, not for them to come and try to repair or repaint it.

          The fourth goal was to, “design convincing and usable documents.” This goal was evident in all of the documents but most obviously and most important was in the resume.  The resume is a document in which the design and the layout are of the utmost importance because it makes your document either easy to understand, or the opposite and it makes it harder to read.  The goal is to make the document as easy as possible to read because the employer gets a lot of resumes and not much time to make the initial cut on them.  This means that my document needed to stand out and be very simple to understand so that the person doing the hiring will pass my resume onto the next level of the hiring process.Next was the goal to, “analyze the ethical responsibilities involved in technical communication.” This goal was truly one that was investigated and considered throughout the entire semester.  Ethics was not a unit that was addressed specifically in one semester over the other but was important in all of the documents.  Ethics is a hard subject because it is not something that can be easily defined as, yes or no, right or wrong, positive or negative.  Ethics is a personnel decision on what is ethical or not.  Many believe that ethics is what the law says is right or wrong.  Although ethics and the law are not directly related it is often a very good guide as more times then not they parallel each other.The sixth goal of the class was, “communicate effectively with diverse audiences.” Unlike the goal referring to ethics this one did have a specific assignment in which this was stressed.  We were assigned a country and then did a revision of our claim letter for that country.  I was given in India to make my revisions.  I started by looking for what revisions needed to take place was look at India in Hofstedes cultural dimensions.  In Gerte Hofstedes list of cultural dimensions India is twice as high as the United States in Power Distance Index.
India is half what the United States is when it comes to Individualism. When it comes to Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity India is very comparable to the United States.  India’s high power distribution means that the Indians have a set hierarchy that is to be followed. This hierarchy is obvious in both the business world and the family. This influenced the letter revision by making sure that the letter is sent to the correct person that can make a decision about my claim. This also meant that I needed to make sure that I did not jump anyone in command. With India being so individualistic it was important that I made sure that in the letter I referred to individuals not organization, or position. Knowing who I was writing was very important. For example I changed, “I have been a customer of the Bike shop for the past 5 years…” to, “I have been a customer of your bike shop, Bike World, for the past 5 years…” This accomplishes the necessity to play to the person as an individual not the institution.         

           The final goal of the class was to, “collaborate on communication projects.” This class goal was accomplished in the final report.  This is a skill that is necessary in the workplace.  Very seldom will you ever have an opportunity to work on a project in the workplace that you do not need to collaborate with others.  The hardest parts about collaborating is trusting your team to not only get there portion of the document done but done well, and to fit our schedules together so that we can combine and edit the document.  The latter was taken care of by the use of a yahoo group that we were all members of.

          The item that I am the most proud of is the job letter and resume.  This is a document that will be very useful to me in the future.  Learning how to tailor the document to the company and what they are looking for is an invaluable skill.  The item that I had the most trouble with was the multi-cultural revision.  I found it hard to interpret the information given by Hofstedes cultural dimensions.  The documents that I think will be the most used for me in the future in the memo, letter, and email.  These are documents that will be used on a daily basis so it is pivotal to not only be able to understand them but to write them also.  In addition the different types of genres that we used in the correspondence package will most likely will be the most common types of writing that will be done in the workplace.  I will walk away from this class with the ability to write many different types of documents that will be used in the workplace.  This will help me in not only getting a job but once I have one it will help me maintain my job.  All of the skills that are learned in technical writing are essential in maintaining a healthy work environment and the most important thing is the ability to communicate both internally and externally.

Reflection Final_Report

The most important parts of the writing of the proposal were the initial decision on the problem that was to be addressed and then of course our initial investigation, may that be on the internet, surveys, or interviews.  The problem was so important because without an obvious and defined problem you have nothing to work off of.  Once the problem was defined the preliminary research was of great importance because it gives you a foundation for the remaining research and writing that would be done on the paper.  The feasibility of our report is of great importance because it is not a proposal but rather a report so this is a document that the company/client will base there future decisions on.  I believe that are document is extremely feasible because we went through a charted/mapped research method that can be recreated by anyone.  This is of the utmost importance that someone else can come to the same conclusion as we have.  Collaborating as a group was a great help because it allowed us to see the problem from different perspectives so the solution was less biased toward a particular solution that one of us might have had.  The hardest part of the collaboration process was being able to fit our group’s member’s schedules together so that we could put together our sections and edit the paper.  This problem was solved by the use of our yahoo group as this made it possible to post section and edit them while allowing the rest of are group the ability to see all of our changes or revisions.  This also made the communication with professor Boettger much easier and efficient.  The most obvious course goal that this accomplished is, “collaborate on communication projects.” But almost all of the other course goals were accomplished or addressed during this project simple because it is the final project therefore it is a culmination of all the skills that were learned during our semester in technical writing.

Oral Presentation

Oral Presentation

Final Report

Final Report

Process

Process

Reader Response 5

When the semester began my perception of technical writing was that it was only done for external purposes like pamphlets, brochures, and advertisements. During this semester I realized that although that is a portion of technical writing it is by no means it extent. To me it seems that the vast majority the technical writing is done internally. It may be internal things that are shared with a select few like letters, emails, or memos that you circulate to a select few. A step even further than this is your resume or job letter. Without a doubt I will use what I learned in this class to write a job letter and resume when looking for a job. Along these lines I will use some of the design aspects that we discussed in order to make a present my portfolio to potential employers. Theses types of writing are done solely for personal gain. I believe that the types of writing that I will use most are the memo and email. I think that they will be used mostly to deliver bad news or act as a claim generator. Being an Architect, communication will be key as I will have many different people looking to me for direction. This may be communicating with the project manager, sub-contractors, or the owners. I will also be writing request for proposals, when after a project has been designed and is done with the construction documents phase, you need to find contractors that will do the work on the project. In many situations I will be in the position of writing proposals to clients that I am trying to build a project. During the proposal phase it will be necessary to design and give information over a PowerPoint presentation. For this I will be able to use the ideas of plain English and the section that covered PowerPoint design. I know now that more is not always best, just because you can make things more flashy this does not meant mean that they hold you attention any better or are easier to understand. In the building industry, especially in this part of the country, you can expect that many of your employees are of a different ethnic background. Many of the manual laborers do not speak that much English so it will be very important to use the conventions displayed in plain English to make any communication that I may have with them as easily understandable as possible. I now have a much better understand of what technical writing is and how it will be used on an almost daily basis in the workplace. There is also always the opportunity that I could be working on projects for overseas clients or even projects that are overseas themselves. If this is the case then Hofstedts dimensions will be a very valuable resource. Knowing how other countries act towards each other will be very important so that I can write my communication to match the audience that I am writing for.

Reader Response 4

All three of the proposals had both strengths and weaknesses that we can draw on as a group in order to make our proposal better. I outline some of these in the paragraphs that follow.

The first proposal looked at the feasibility of putting in a pedestrian tunnel to eliminate the amount of traffic. This document had very good organization, and was laid out in a very easy to read format. One of the detriments of this paper was the fact that was of the 30,000 students they were only going to survey 100. This group went into the paper already with there mind made up that a pedestrian tunnel was the best option. They came to this conclusion before any of the research was completed. This group could have done a better job at doing audience analysis. It is never clear who the primary audience is, they need to make sure they know who is the decision maker is.

Unlike the first proposal the second one very clearly who the audience is. One problem with this proposal was the survey. In the survey many of the questions are leading. This forces the audience who is taking the survey to think of the question with a bias before the question is even asked. Another problem with the surveys is that there is a good chance that the restaurants will not allow them to distribute the surveys. Only the people who are already going to the restaurants will take the survey. This does not allow for a very thorough study.

The third was a proposal for renovating the recreational fields. The beginning of this proposal does not have a very good attention getter. The opening does not lead you to want to read the rest of the paper. This group did not seem to consider how the students using the fields would be affected by the changes. This paper does not propose any research be done by the group. It seems to be more of a procedure then a proposal. The group seems to either be writing reports or they already gave the milk up.

Reader Response 3

When looking at the document I looked at it to see how it related to Gesalts five principles. The five principals of Gesalt’s psychology are Balance, Alignment, Grouping, Consistency, and Contrast.

I will first look at the balance of the document. Balance in a document is needed so that the reader can understand the purpose of the document. If done correctly this makes the document reader friendly and easy to follow. In the document that we were given the author used three columns to organize the page. Having three columns shows is visually appealing to our senses. It gives you balance without appearing to be so symetrical. When designing a document, or anything for that matter, it is best to do things in odd numbers. It could have been beneficial for one of the columns to be used solely for images. The Technology division also added balance by putting a header and then a footer to balance it out. I don’t think that this is as effective as could be just because the header is so dominant in comparision to the rest of the document.

The next thing to look at is alignment. I think that the document does this well by the use of heading and the eventually numbers and bullets. Bullets make the text easier to read because it allows the author to use chunking by breaking up the text. I think that the document uses to many different types of bullets. In my opinion they should of either stayed with the numbers or the bullets, this would make the document feel more like everything conforms together.

The third principle is grouping. This is used to group things with similarities together visually. This is done in the document by the use of color, font types, where the text is (tabs), and how large the text is.

The fourth principle is consistancy. In my opinion even thought the document seems to be consistant it has to many conventions going on at the same time. There is to much color, borders, images, etc. going on at the same time. If the author had stuck to one or two of these things I think that the document would have been more successful.

The final principle is contrast. The document does a good job at creating an eyecatching title bar. The colors that the document uses are contrasting colors so that makes the the text easy to read. The author also did a good job by incorporating images throughout the document to draw the reader attention to certain aspects of the document.

Claim Letter_Revision

Claim Letter_Revised

Refelction for Multi-Cultural

For my claim letter I wrote about when I got a brand new Trek 1500 road bicycle that had scratches on it. I requested that Bike World replace the frame with a new one that is not damaged. The original letter was written for the United States. This is shown in how I used a direct approach when both telling the problem and asking for compensation.

For my multi-cultural revision I revisited my claim letter and edited it for India. India has the highest population besides China with over 1.07 billion residents. India is one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world. The caste system is still in place in India; a person’s caste is a matter of lineage and can not change. There are more than 33 different languages spoken by at least 100,000 people. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism were all born in India. Indians are religious, family oriented, and philosophical. In India the family takes precedence over the individual. In India education is a primary concern. Schooling is free and compulsory from ages six to fourteen.  In Gerte Hofstedes list of cultural dimensions India is twice as high as the United States in Power Distance Index. India is half what the United States is when it comes to Individualism. When it comes to Uncertainty Avoidance and Masculinity India is very comparable to the United States. India’s high power distribution means that the Indians have a set hierarchy that is to be followed. This hierarchy is obvious in both the business world and the family. This influenced the letter revision by making sure that the letter is sent to the correct person that can make a decision about my claim. This also meant that I needed to make sure that I did not jump anyone in command. With India being so individualistic it was important that I made sure that in the letter I referred to individuals not organization, or position. Knowing who I was writing was very important. For example I changed, “I have been a customer of the Bike shop for the past 5 years…” to, “I have been a customer of your bike shop, Bike World, for the past 5 years…” This accomplishes the necessity to play to the person as an individual not the institution.

It rewrote a section of my paper in plain English in order to make the letter more users friendly. When doing so it is important that you are not dumbing down the message that you want to say you are simple making it more reader friendly. For example the passage, “When I got the bike back to my home and removed it from the box I noticed that the frame was scratched on the front fork. Your employees where the ones that placed the bike into my truck so I personally could not have caused the damage to happen. I am enclosing pictures of the scratched frame for your reference. I am asking that you replace the frame with one that is not damaged.” was the original. This was changed to, “I got the bike to my house and took it out of the box. The frame was scratched on the front fork. A store employee loaded the bike box into my truck so I could not have damaged it. I enclosed a picture of the damaged frame for your reference. My request is that you replace the damaged frame with a new one.” The sentence length is kept short so that the reader does not get lost or sidetracked.