Remote Learning:

This semester has been a new challenge for everyone. It is the first time that everyone has been forced to do remote learning. When I heard that we would have to do a large group project at the end of the semester, I was concerned with how that would play out with everyone working at home. I feared that communication would be an issue and people would not stay on task. Thankfully, I was wrong. My group did a great job at communicating for all four projects. We had a discord server where everyone communicated regularly and made sure each group member was on task. I never felt that communication was poor or that it would be much better if we were learning in person. I was pleasantly surprised with the new remote setting. In addition, emote learning gave me my first experience with asynchronous classes. I enjoyed this new experience because it gave us the opportunity to just work at our own pace which can be beneficial to some students.

To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives?

Every single project in this class forced me to reflect on my progress with the course learning outcomes. After every project came a reflection section, where I reflected on how well I achieved 2-3 of the course learning outcomes. Each assignment required me to meet all of these objectives. All the assignments required me to research using different databases, consider audience and rhetorical situation, work in a team, perform a genre analysis before each project, and clearly articulate a stance in my writing. In addition, we also engaged in peer review within our groups and revised our work. Therefore, I feel that I have met all of the course learning outcomes.

In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and does evolved this  semester?

Prior to taking this class, I did not know what the rhetorical situation was, nor did I know how engineers wrote or the types of documents they composed. My original perception on writing was that it was a way to express your creativity. The rhetorical situation taught me that you should always have a specific audience in mind, have a specific motivation for your writing, make sure your writing has purpose, clearly show the audience your stance on the topic, and choose a specific medium, or format to put your writing in. While I did not master the rhetorical situation right away, by the time we wrote our final project, I had a deep understanding of the rhetorical situation and the way engineers write. The most important thing an engineer can do when they write is make sure they write to a specific audience, write with purpose, show that they know a lot about the topic, and persuade the audience that their proposal or idea is valid.

How does the audience impact that content and purpose of your text? 

The audience is an essential consideration when composing any document. Audience decides what kind of vocabulary you should use, which topics to avoid or focus on, the reason why you are writing, the types of things you ask your audience, what you try to persuade them of, etc. For example, if you are writing to a CEO that you know to be vegan, you will not invite them to a steak dinner. In addition, if you know your audience is relatively young, you will user simpler vocabulary to accommodate to their level of understanding. However, if you are writing to a scholar, you will avoid using simple vocabulary in order to avoid offending them. Audience effects the purpose of the text because if you are writing to a CEO about a project you are looking to take on, you will look into that persons history in order to find a way to convince them that your project is valuable and worthwhile. On the other hand, if you are writing an instruction manual, you will write to a broad audience and consider many different ways to accommodate the needs of an average consumer of the product.

Overall, this course was a new and interesting experience in all aspects. Prior to this course, I have never written with such detail and consideration for the audience or purpose. I also never had asynchronous classes or collaborated so much with team members that I never met in person before. The assignments did a good job in developing my understanding of the rhetorical elements and transformed my understanding of writing from only being something to express creativity, to a more formal and structured point of view.