Welcome To Carlos Rodriguez’s Web Portfolio and Self Assessment
The time I spent in the Writing for Engineering 21007 class was time well spent. It helped me hone my ability in writing and it helped me become a better writer by working together with peers and receiving advice from my professor. I would say that I never had a problem with my writing but it definitely needed something more to make it better. In this self assessment essay I wish to explain what we as a class did to improve our writing.
Working with others did help me realize a few problems with my writing or with how I did assignments for Professor Barber. Having our own groups in the class gave me a new perspective on my writing since there was more than one opinion on my writing other than my own. When I did the resume and cover letter, one of my classmates gave his opinion on my resume and said it was not well done. That helped me realize how it had to be done and I looked for a good example and took that template to make my own and it came out better.
Although I didn’t get to practice much for the Writing for Engineering class, I did use what I learned in the class for my other class called Foundations of Speech. In that class, the class also had papers and speeches to write. A speech must sound clear and concise and not redundant and boring. To achieve this, I had to edit my papers and read them to myself and figure out what sounded redundant and useless in the paper. Once fixing it I had to present the speeches in front of the class.
For the assignments in Writing for Engineering, I took into account who my audience was and why I was writing to them. One example is the resume. To make it look as good as possible, I took my Professor’s advice to put in soft skills like being able to use a computer or being able to speak 3 languages. I also took my classmate’s advice when doing the resume and added what was needed. Compared to the original rendition of the resume, the new version had more details and was much cleaner.
During the 4 months of Writing For Engineering, each student was placed into groups for peer review. These peer reviews have been very helpful for me and hopefully helpful to the other members of my group. We each have our opinions or our reviews on each other’s papers or PowerPoints. I believe that having a review done on our work is beneficial because it helps me, at least, see a new perspective on my work other than my own and this helps me see any problems with my work.
Working on multiple genres of writing really helped me open my mind to what I could expect to see in the future. In the class, we worked on PowerPoints, data displays, and a few essays. Professor Barber told us what would be expected of us in the coming future since most of us were in engineering majors. If we could hone our skills in writing and PowerPoints, we could use what we learned and apply it into the real world and I think that this helped me a lot because I believe I still had many things that still needed to work on and this class showed a new perspective on them.
One of the things that was important to work on was how we could use tone in our essays and how we could set the tone for a specific audience. When dealing with a senior audience , we had to use very respectful language instead of laid back language. Although I am formal in most of my essays, this part of the Writing for Engineers helped me improve on my use of formal terms. This class prepared me for the Engineering scene.
Another important aspect of the Writing for Engineering class was finding sources. To be able to find good sources is a skill and it is a skill that is taught in Writing for Engineering. Sources such as articles or legal documents are all viable sources of information and I learned this as I did more essays and projects in this class. However, the most important thing when it comes to sources is the iEEE format of citing sources. Prior to entering Writing for Engineering, I didn’t know that this format existed. I learned that this format is what is used in Engineering to cite sources. If I hadn’t known this, it would have made my image look bad since I didn’t take the time to at least know how to cite my sources in this format.
When I was using the sources for my various essays and projects, I would take the most important parts of the source. In the class, Professor Barber taught us that a PowerPoint does not require so much information on each slide. Putting too much information on each slide takes away from the audience’s attention on the presenter. The presenter is the project, the PowerPoint is merely a tool used to help the presenter convey his or her ideas. I took this information and I used it in my own PowerPoint. When I was doing my PowerPoint I only took the most important parts of my sources and I explained them instead of merely putting the information on the slide.
I believe that the time I spent in the Writing for Engineering class was an investment of my time. I learned a lot of new things about writing and how writing can be used as a tool for my ideas in the future. I understand the value of these writing classes because they can help students who may not have been great writers become better and continue to improve their writing. Before entering the class, I prided myself on my skills as a writer, but after the semester, I understood that I still need practice but now I have the tools to help me on my journey as an engineer.
