Reflection on my Progress as a Writer/Researcher this Semester
Course Outcomes
  1. Generating Inquiry:
    • In Task 2, I had to read, understand, and review other people's research and interview questions, then create my own research questions and interview questions that would help answer those research questions.
  2. Multiple Ways of Writing:
    • In Task 3, I coded a simple website that includes a summary of what I learned in this class, how I improved my writing and research skills, and how I will apply the learned knowledge in the future. I created a remediation of Task 2 by creating a Google Slides that summarizes the main points I made in that essay. Also, in Task 2, I complimented the writer for using visual charts and tables to summarize the answers in the interview study.
  3. Information Literacy:
    • In Task 2, I used Google Scholar to find appropriate and relevant research papers that were from scholarly sources such as Carnegie Mellon University and the University of San Diego. I also made sure to use scholarly articles in Task 1 published by universities and NASA.
  4. Research Genre Production:
    • In Task 2, my research community is related to computer science, and I made sure to use the correct terminology; for example, in software engineering, a "bug" means an error in a program, which is different than the meaning outside the programming community. In Task 3, I made sure to define key terms at the beginning of the Google Slides so the reader would understand the basic terminology used.
  5. Contributing Knowledge:
    • In Task 2, I pointed out successes in a research study, such as the use of visual charts to summarize data, but also pointed out some missing pieces, such as the lack of listing the types of projects each interviewee contributed to and a sample population that wasn’t general enough.
  6. Revision:
    • In Task 3, I created a remediation to Task 2 by creating a Google Slides to shorten the content for readers who want a quick and concise summary of my essay. In Tasks 2 and 1, I listened to the advice of my peers when they said to consider counterpoints, and I helped provide meaningful feedback to my peers. I made sure to proofread all my work and fix any grammatical mistakes before submitting.
Reflection
Before this class, I'd always struggled with writing in large quantities, as I would usually over-summarize my main points. I've learned that writing comes a lot more naturally to me when I have a genuine interest in the topic. I've improved my ability to write and research in many ways. I learned how to use Google Scholar and Primo Search with keywords like 'OR' and 'AND' to find the most relevant scholarly articles. I think this will be a very useful skill to have in the future, since there's so much information to learn on the Internet, and being able to search for credible sources will help you find that information. I've learned how to read, understand, and critique research papers. I've noticed that most of them share a similar format: they start with a background and related work, propose research questions and methods, state and discuss findings, discuss possible limitations, and write a brief conclusion. I improved my skills in briefly summarizing my main ideas and points attractively in a PowerPoint or Google Slides and creating websites to share information with the public. This will obviously be a useful skill to have as a software engineer, as I will have to write documentation that briefly summarizes my code, and I might have to work on front-end (what the end-user will visually see) development.