Extra Credit

Assignment #5: Portfolio

Due April 30th

The question we asked you to think about repeatedly in this course has been, “How does communication work in your field?” Your final assignment is to put together a portfolio of a few pieces completed throughout the course, revise them, and reflect upon these revisions. Your immediate audience for your portfolio is your instructor however, analyzing the different parts of your portfolio is really for your benefit—to reflect on your communication growth over the last few months more completely than you have in the small reflections you’ve done along the way. Below is the required components needed to be added in your portfolio for full credit:

• Cover Page
• Table of contents
• Introductory Reflection
• Chosen assignment #1
• Revision of assignment #1
• Revision Reflection
• Chosen assignment that best reflects -OVE
• Revision of chosen -OVE assignment
• Revision Reflection
• Closing/ wrap-up (optional)

Contents from above should all be typed, printed on plan white printer paper, and organized in a professional looking binding in the order listed above. Maintain a font size of 12pt, double spaced, and Times New Roman font throughout the portfolio, with the exception of the cover page. 

Cover Page:

As first page of the portfolio, this page should be neat, organized, and professional looking. Include your fist and last name, the course name, and a heading of the project. This page may any fonts/sizes. Be creative!

Table of Contents:

Include a full list of all the portfolio’s contents, as well as page numbers. Table of contents should be double spaced and have a heading at the top of the page. 

Introductory Reflection:

The purpose of this opening reflection is to think back over the semester and re-examine with new eyes the communication work you’ve done in English 150 in order to assess your growth as a communicator using the WOVE modes.  Write your overall reflection in the form of a letter addressed to your instructor. You can use the questions below as a guide as needed:

 How have your composing processes become more sophisticated since you began the course?

·      How do you go about generating initial ideas for pieces you’re composing, as well as the details and explanation needed to develop and support those ideas?

·           How do you accommodate different audiences when you communicate? How does audience consideration affect choice of communication mode(s)?

·      How do you draft and revise your compositions?

·      How do you use others (peers, instructor, friends, family, etc.) to assist you in making effective revisions?

·      How have you improved your editing process?  What are your typical problems with mechanics and what kind of progress have you made with these?

·           Which of your composing habits have remained the same during this semester and why?  Which have changed and why?

Note: Your reflection as a letter should include an introduction, conclusion, and examples from your work.

Chosen Assignment #1:

Choose one of the assignments completed in the course that you wish to revise later, and include a copy of the finished product you submitted to your professor. This can be a newly printed copy, or the copy marked by your professor.

Revision of Assignment #1:

Throughly revise the assignment chosen above. Note that Revision here means more than editing; it means, “re-seeing” the subject.  You should include additional material, delete parts that don’t work, reorganize the piece, refine your opening and closing, improve your title, etc.—in other words, you need to do a significant amount of rewriting.

Revision Reflection:

Now that you have looked back over your work, and made significant changes too it, ask yourself “why” you changed what you did. What did you do to make it better? What did you learn? Write a half page reflection using these and the below questions as guides: 

• Describe additions made to the piece (written, text, visuals, source material, etc.).  Highlight a couple examples of these additions and explain their benefit.

·      Describe portions you chose to delete. Explain the benefit of those deletions.

·      Explain what parts you decided required no changes.  Give a couple of examples of these and offer support for your decision.

·      If you reorganized or reformatted elements, explain how doing so benefits the piece.

Chosen -OVE Assignment:

Choose an assignment that best reflects -OVE (oral, verbal, and electronic communication) that you wish to revise later, and include a copy of the finished product you submitted to your professor. This can be a newly printed copy, or the copy marked by your professor.

Revision of -OVE Assignment:

Throughly revise the assignment chosen above. Note that Revision here means more than editing; it means, “re-seeing” the subject.  You should include additional material, delete parts that don’t work, reorganize the piece, refine your opening and closing, improve your title, etc.—in other words, you need to do a significant amount of rewriting.

Revision Reflection:

Write a half page reflection using these and the below questions as guides: 

·           Why you chose this/these piece(s) as evidence of your best work in the oral, visual, and electronic modes

·           What, if any, changes you made to the original versions, why, and to what benefit

·           What you believe the piece/s demonstrate about you as an oral, visual, and electronic communicator

Closing/wrap-up (optional):

Write half a page wrapping up the assignment. What did you learn? What would you change? Was this assignment helpful? Reflect.

2014 Graduate And Professional Student Research Conference Write-up

On Friday April 4th, I attended the 2014 Graduate and Professional Student Research Conference located in the design building of ISU campus. The session I decided to attend was titled "What is Graduate School Like?" This session was a panel of six undergraduate students of ISU, each of which were very knowledgable in their field of study and had a lot of good advice for the audience. One of the aspects I liked the most about this seminar, was the fact that each undergrad student had a slightly different "major" so the audience got to hear a lot of different similarities and differences between different options. Half of the time was spent with the undergrads talking about how they got into their particular program, what they enjoy about it, and what they are struggling with. Also discussed was how to go from a four year college to the next step, and how to prepare for it. The other half of the time was dedicated to the audience for asking questions and reviewing what we had gone over. I am really glad I had the opportunity to attend this conference seminar, because I gained key knowledge that I don't know how else I would have gotten. The six ladies who answered our questions were great and a valuable resource for a student like me to learn from and look up too.

Not that anyone will really understand unless you were there, but here are my typed notes I took during the seminar: 

continued because no jobs right out of college

continued because current job didn’t for fill passion

continued right out of college

continued so could  get the jobs that every one fights for

grad very different from undergrad school

only go to grad school if thats what you really want to do

continued because no jobs available that she really liked

nothing really prepares you for grad school

grad school is a marathon

continued because didn’t want to continue with job wanted to go back to school.

undergrad is 160 course credits and you get the degree

every program is different

dead-ends, go back, dead ends, go back

grad has to be self motivated

deadlines

What do you like about grad school?

like learning, finding out things that you wouldn’t know without grad school

gives more freedom to choose your future

feeling of being a grad school. the label. colleges with professors

first few years course work, but last few years = freedom to explore exciting to find your own results

research is fun to deal with, to direct your own research

How did you choose your major?

had the idea after college

note: choose a professor you can easily get along with

progression from undergrad to grad

pairing with boyfriend, waited for a good time for both. decided on isu. not going to know group dynamic from the beginning. figure out dynamic of lab. talk with current grad students. sooooo important. ask them if they are happy. social outlet. If offered a visit, GO!

how log does it take?

graduation rates?

where living?

How are students supported? educationally? emotionally?

Grad is HARD but REWARDING. buy you need the support from professors.

Time:

time not doing work is spent at home 

course work not always mon,tues,wed, etc. sometime intensive class days only twice a month and rest is done on own time

balancing research and courses, not treated as a student, expected to do well and self motivate 

first two years course work. 12 hours a week in class lot of assignments.

Find a hobby. there will be times you aren’t doing well.

Why My Chosen Topic is Important to Me:

Personal Topic Importance Review

Research papers in general are very important. Their purpose is to be a form of communication over a topic that had a lot of hard research up into it. Not only this, but the facts stated in the paper need to be well supported. You can do this either through a biological page, or other form of works cited page. Research papers allow known information that was discovered by one person to be shared with other people whom have interest. In this way, knowledge can be built upon. 

This specific research paper is important to me because, like most writers, we choose to write about a topic we have in interest in. For me, this interest is in my future career, optometry. This paper is important because through the hours of research needed to put this paper together, I go to learn quite a bit, and to share my findings with my readers. My hope is that they learn a little something too. 

One thing I did have a hard time with while writing the paper, was organizing what I had to say. Facts were found from a wide range of sources, at different times throughout the research process. When it came time to set up how I planned to write the paper, It was hard to group similar topics in a paragraph without some being too lengthy and others no more than a sentence or too. This then lead to the problem of "the fluff". When the facts didn't make the paper exactly what I wanted it to be, and not quite the length requirement, adding unnecessary "fluff" seamed to be the solution. Instead, I found that this distracts the reader from the main point of the paper. It all became very frustrating. 

Research papers are important, and while I don't believe anyone just ADORES writing them, they can be enjoyable if the topic is of interest. Everyone has struggles writing papers at one point or another, so my advice, is to just get through it and work hard so that you may be proud of your work. 

Research Proposal

Amanda Gridley

English 250

A.R.Morry

March 12, 2014

Research Proposal

Communication is used by everyone, everyday. Whether it’s through visual or verbal communication, it is not something that can be avoided in a functional day-to-day life. Communication is used to express thoughts to others, and for us as college students, this is a skill we all need to master in order to be successful in our future careers. The problem with communication, is that there are so many different forms, and not everyone uses the same one. Because of this, studying and learning how to properly communicate between each other is much more difficult. While my future career is in the medical field, Optometry to be more specific, most of my classmates are in engineering. Through my research, I have learned that while engineers communicate through diagrams and brief summaries, my future form of communication will be detailed documents and person-to-person speech skills, depending on the position i will hold. Compared to the engineers, I will be dealing more with people in person, while they will be dealing with their clients through manuals and emails. That is another problem in communication; while each career has it’s own set of communication methods, there are many smaller, more specific jobs inside of these brood job titles. Basically communication not only differs between one career field, to the next, but also between different positions inside a career field. 

For this class, we have been instructed to write an essay on the topic of communication in our future career. With such a brood range of possible focus points, I decided to include multiple key ideas, that I think are important to consider when thinking about communication. Below are a few of the questions I will be answering in my essay:

1. How do the different forms of writing and communication in medical fields effect the day-to-day life of the doctor/patient relationship?

2)How do communication barriers effect the relationship between a patient and their doctor?

3)What kinds of communication work best in the medical field between both the patient and other coworkers. How can these forms of communication be improved upon in our society future, and who has the power to change this?

4)Who might an optometrist communicate with on a regular basis. What are some possible communication barriers that could effect the optometrist’s job? How would they get through these barriers?

Specific Research Questions:

Assignment: 
Write two or three very specific research questions that you might want to use to build your paper around.

1) How do the different forms of writing and communication in medical fields effect the day-to-day life of the doctor/patient relationship?
2)How do communication barriers effect the relationship between a patient and their doctor?
3)What kinds of communication work best in the medical field between both the patient and other coworkers. How can these forms of communication be improved upon in our society future, and who has the power to change this?

Assignment #3 Textual Rhetorical Analysis Paper

Amanda Gridley

Amanda Gridley

English 250

A.R. Mallory

February 26, 2014

Textual Rhetorical Analysis

The purpose of my article is to reflect upon the students in the optical field, and what  methods and materials best help them to learn and study. The information was collected through the survey of enrolled students, and presented in an essay format with visual charts to display the information. With this information, educators are able to decide which teaching method they should use in order to best helps the students to succeed, and which methods to avoid. 

The article titled, Optometry and WebCT: A Student Survey of the Value of Web-based Learning Environments in Optometric Education, was organized and written by Peter Herse and Alvin Lee. The purpose of the article was to express the findings of what optical students prefer to use to both help them learn in the classroom, and study outside of class. With this information the intended audience, the educators of the university, are able to make teaching arrangements that will better help their students. 

In order to convey the results, the authors typed up an essay document composed of multiple parts that make the data easy to follow. The introduction is typed into three small parts titled Purpose, Methods, and Results. These are real brief paragraphs that explain the information as an overall big picture, and sum-up the essay as a whole. This is nice for the intended audience, because it saves time for the educators who are simply looking for quick ideas while planning their teaching methods. Instead of reading the entire essay that follows, they can skim these introduction paragraphs, and get the big picture. The actual essay follows. The essay goes into greater detail than the intro paragraphs, and is intended for the audience who want to take a deeper look into why the results are the way they are. Also included in the body of the essay are multiple tables of the collected data. This is a great visual for the audience, and does a good job of presenting the information in a way that is easy to understand. The audience members can look at the table and relate to the conclusion described in the text. It makes the writing much more supported and entertaining to read. 

With the data collected, and the intended audience in mind, this article does a great job of presenting the information in a way that is easy to follow and understand. The main reason for this is the great organization. The separation of the intro, essay, and data tables, makes the information available in a way that gets the point across while still keeping your attention. The context provides the necessary information without going into long explanations or irrelevant facts. Also the style of the document, being asymmetrical, keeps your eyes moving to the key parts of the article. Overall the delivery of the information was very successful. The important facts were stated in a way that is easy to follow, and the conclusion was well supported for the audience through the essay and data tables. 

Through the careful organization and style of the writing, this article effectively and efficiently fulfills the purpose of communicating the student survey results to the intended audience of the optical educators.

Article I will be Rhetorically Analyzing in my Upcoming Paper

I will be rhetorically analyzing the same link that I did a summery for earlier in the semester. This article is about optical education, which is my intended career path. The direct link to the article is below.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1444-0938.2005.tb06663.x/full
-A