Purpose statement
The objective of this memo is to peruse the things that I learned from English 308 course. This course covered a lot of things that I did not expect such as redesign project and team witting assignments.
Collaborative projects
In doing the collaborative project such as the Quick Reference Card and Redesign Project, we worked as a group. As people with different point of views and writing styles, it was hard for us to divide the task. However, we solved this problem by working as a team and we went over everything together. By going over what we had written, we avoided repetition in the writing and we had time to give our opinions about what the other members of the team had written. With that, we came up with an improved project which we can say was a team effort.
Having a collaborative project for this course is very beneficial to the students since it help them improve their writing skills and they also learn how to work with others. Working with others in a writing project is hard since it requires lots of brainstorming for the contents of the paper. In my last academic year, I had worked with different teams but all of the collaborative projects we had did not include much writing, so only one member of our group did all the writing part. With that experience, I did not feel that I was really a part of the team since we did not do things together as we did with the collaborative projects in English 308. With the projects we had as a team in this course, I can say that I was really a member of a team since each of us contributed to the projects and it felt good. This experience in English 308 gave us an opportunity to share our knowledge in technical writing such as styles and formats with our group mates. I also had an opportunity to learn from the other team members about the software programs that we used in the course such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft office programs.
Individual projects
There are three individual projects that were included in English 308. These are the Technology Access Memo, Formal Report, and the Reflection Memo. These three individual projects taught the students the proper way of technical writing. In the formal report assignment, I got a chance to interview Dr. Minhaz who already had 30 years of experience in the field of engineering. I learned a lot from that interview regarding my choice of future career. Moreover, the technology access memo was very helpful because as engineer I will write lots of memorandums in the future that may include some of the topics that Dr. Minhaz discussed during the interview that I did for the formal report assignment. I am glad that this course covered this important aspect. I am very glad that this course gave us lessons on technical writing and gave us the opportunity to talk to other people regarding the topics that we love discussing.
Course readings and materials
In general, all the course readings and materials were very helpful in understanding and appreciating the course. The reading material that I liked the most is the Purdue OWL website. It is very helpful website that covers most of the topics that are needed for technical writing. It is a well organized web page that provides different examples of writings. It is a very good reference since it is very accessible anywhere and anytime.
Closing thoughts/conclusion
English 308 is one of my best courses that I had taken so far. It covered the most important technical writing subjects that are needed for my future career as a mechanical engineer. I learned a lot from this course including technical writing and working with others. I also learned that sharing my knowledge can benefit me since other people will not be afraid to say what they know. In the team projects, I learned that asking someone for help and admitting the things that you don’t know is not so hard to do. It can help the team to improve the skills of each member and to do better collaboration about their works. On the other hand, the individual projects gave us the opportunity to express our own knowledge and interests about our own fields. The projects however can be done more easily with the use of Microsoft programs. If I have time I would learn how to use Microsoft Publisher to create websites, because these days the website is very important thing that we cannot ignore in any field.
I recommend this course to all the senior students of any field. This course will help them prepare for their job market and will give them the direction to better communicate with others especially regarding the success of their career.
