TO:          Dr. Jared Grogan

FROM:    Vittoria Veltri

DATE:      4/29/15

SUBJECT: Performance Review 

I believe I learned many useful lessons throughout the course of this class.  Many of these lessons, if not all of them pertained to the four main learning objectives of the course which are as follows:

1. Writing and designing - learning to write clearly and effectively using proper formatting, grammar, and mechanics.
2. Reading and analyzing - learning to consider design, audience and purpose of a document utilizing tools such as graphics, formatting, usability, etc. 
3. Researching and documenting - learning to create and conduct primary and secondary research and use it effectively and persuasively throughout a document.
4. Using technology and media - learning to use current technology and media to support technical writing pieces.

These learning objectives are essential to master and integrate into any technical piece of writing.  Writing and design are extremely important when it comes to conveying the writing's message accurately and making a document usable and easy to read.  Reading and analyzing helps prepare the writer for the writing process and allows you to maintain focus on the purpose, audience, and design of your piece.  This makes your writing relevant and persuasive to whomever is reading it.  Researching and documenting is also important to make technical writing persuasive and credible.  Implementing and leaning to use technology and media to support you technical writing gives more people access to your  technical document and can facilitates the message of the writing to make it more clear and understandable.  Based on my individual and collaborative performance throughout the class, I feel I learned and displayed my mastery of these four learning objectives.

Individual Performance

When looking back on my individual performance for this class I feel I completed each project successfully when when evaluating myself based on the learning objectives for the course.  Each project incorporated most, if not all, of the learning objectives.  Each individual assignment taught you a knew concept within each of the learning objectives as well.

Project 1

When it came to the resume and cover letter I feel that I wrote very professional documents with few grammatical errors and formatted them in a professional way.  When writing the resume and cover letter, I was encouraged by the course to analyze my audience and purpose and tailor my writing to align with what my audience would want and what my purpose was.  One thing I could have improved upon in my cover letter and my resume is to be more specific about projects that pertain to the job I was applying for and detail them in both documents.  Researching the company I was applying for helped me pick out key words to include in my cover letter and resume, which is important considering the first thing that your resume comes into contact with could be a computer programmed to examine the document for key words.

I learned a lot about using current technology and media to my advantage to establish my professional web presence when I created my professional webpage.  I feel like I used the six design principles effectively when considering the layout of my webpage.  Unlike writing a resume and a cover letter, writing a professional webpage was something that was new to me.  I feel I overcame this learning curve successfully with the guidance provided by this class and the easy to use websites that were available.  To improve upon my webpage I could have put up more graphics and been more specific about projects that were relevant to my career.

Project 2

Creating the wikiHow instruction set, like the professional webpage, was completely new to me.  Despite this I feel as though I was able to consider what my audience wanted, used graphics in an effective way, and researched my topic in a such a way that made the instruction set successful.  Learning to create and conduct a usability test helped identify the audience and make sure all the information and graphics were relevant.  I feel I did a good job identifying my scope and keeping the steps simple and clear.  When creating this site I had to tailor my writing style to make it as concise, but also as clear as possible considering each step could only be explained in one to two sentences. Taking better quality pictures could have improved the overall quality of my instruction set.  

Short Writing Assignments

When it came to the short writing assignments I kept my audience in mind and stuck to the purpose of the writing in all cases.  My grammar and mechanics most likely could have been improved upon, considering I did not go back and revise many of these assignments.  However, I feel that I was able to read the text that was given, interpret the meaning and comment on it effectively and persuasively in these assignments.   

Collaborative Performance

Project 2: Usability Test

When conducting the usability test for our instruction sets, it was very helpful when considering audience and maintaining focus for the assignment.  I feel it helped the entire document become more persuasive and effective.  It also helped improve upon the mechanics of my wikiHow site. When conducting my usability test, I could have asked the user to speak their thoughts out loud more.  That way I would have gotten a better feel for how the user truly felt about the site. Through this process I learned how to effectively create and conduct primary research for a technical document.  This was very valuable to the outcome of my site and taught me how to interact with other when conducting research, which will be very helpful in the future when conducting research with others.   

Project 3

Creating the project plan and technical report required the most collaborative team effort and involved the most research of any of the projects in the class.  The research plan helped the team as a whole, as well as me personally, to maintain focus for the assignment and reminded me to always keeping multiple audiences in mind when it came to writing the actual report.  Working on a project collaboratively also helped eliminate mechanical errors because there were many eyes on the same document able to make corrections. This was very helpful for me considering mechanics is not one of my strong suits, however I feel I improved in that area over the course of this class.  For me personally when working on these assignments at first it was difficult to make sure all the team members were on the same page, but as the project progressed I learned to communicate more effectively and clearly.  I also learned through stasis theory, to not move on to the next step until everyone in the group was on the same page, especially when it came to the fundamental concepts of the project.   As the team leader, I worked to further the teams success on this project by delegating the work in a way that tried to use everybody's strengths to the group's advantage.  Some of the people in the group were better at revising than others so they were designated to be some of the last pair of eyes to look over and make corrections to the study.  Personally I made a large contribution to the evaluation, criteria, introduction, conclusions, and revisions sections of the feasibility study and wrote a first draft of many of these sections, while having others improve upon my work when in the revision stages.  I could have helped conduct more research for the report and if I could do it all again I would focus more time on researching useful information pertaining to our project. I could have also made a more specific time table for the completion of the project which would have helped everyone remember the deadlines and when they needed to complete certain responsibilities. Overall I felt our team worked well together and people's strengths made up for others weaknesses.  

Conclusion 

I believe that my individual and collaborative work this semester met the learning objectives for the class.  I learned effective writing and design in every project conducted for this class.  For the resume, cover letter, and professional webpage I learned how to how to write professionally and clearly.  When writing the wikiHow instruction set, I learned how to write concisely yet understandably.  I also learned to effectively use graphics to facilitate the point of my writing.  Writing the feasibility study taught me how to write professionally with a group of people to multiple audiences. I also learned how to be more persuasive in my writing when creating this report.  Reading and analyzing played a huge part in every project as well.  Whether it was for a job application, internet instruction set users, or decision makers, every project emphasized analyzing your audience and purpose to make your technical writing more relevant and persuasive.  Usability was also emphasized in all of the projects.  Every assignment helped to fine tune the usability of whatever type of technical report I was creating, whether it was a webpage or a professional correspondence.  Using technology and media was also an emphasized lesson in all of the projects.  In project one, I learned to use a professional webpage and graphics supporting my professional web presence. In project two I learned how to use a site like wikiHow to make a persuasive, usable instruction set with graphics.  In project three I learned to apply these concepts to a technical report, using graphics to facilitate my research. Research and documenting was also heavily emphasized and all the projects and one I felt I learned well, especially when it came to research and documentation for the feasibility study.

Three lessons that I will take away from this class ensuring everything I write is usable, my writing is always tailored to my audience, and stasis theory is used when completing group work.  Creating a usable document is vital for any document one writes.  In the back of my mind I always knew that, but I learned through this class to make that a main focus for my writing.  Also considering audience is something that I did not consciously think about when creating a piece of writing, but now I will analyze my audience before I start the writing process.  I will also utilize stasis theory when it comes to working in groups to write a document in the future.  This will help my future projects run smoother and maintain focus.  Overall I feel I benefited greatly and learned a lot throughout the course of this class.