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Why Blogging Like This Creates Meaningful Education

For this capstone professional writing class, ENGL 515, we have been assigned a normal project with a unique twist, which makes the project more realistic. This semester, we were supposed to write five to six blogposts, which is a common writing task assigned to students on multiple levels of education. Usually when teachers or professors assign a blog post or a discussion post, it is supposedly for a community or audience of at least peers, but what typically happens is that students read the prompt or question and only interact with the posts of their peers if it is required. For the 515 blog, that is not the case. This assignment is vastly different from a short-essay answer on a discussion forum or website. This group blog on Blogger acts as both an assessment and a teaching tool. It is what Bruce Frey refers to as an Authentic Classroom Assessment: "a classroom assessment task that involves the student deeply, both in terms of cognitive complexity and intrinsic interest, and

We're Still Gaining Skills in Purdue COVID-19 School

In the past year, education has changed for everyone. From the professors, teachers, and administrators who create the educational environment to the students who participate in it, no one is getting the same experience as they did before 2020. Purdue is no exception and now has even more reason (and video posts) to say their favorite term, "Purdue grit," this year than in the previous years. What one might be curious to see is what students are actually getting out of this wildly different educational setup. The short answer is that Purdue students are getting what everyone else is–a crash course in adapting and how to use Zoom. But if we look at the silver lining of this season of COVID school, we may find that we are gaining valuable skills that we might not have been able (or forced) to learn in our ordinary educational contexts. The first and most obvious adjustment to my Purdue courses this year was that the normal course structure was ripped away. At least in the liber

My Take On Professional Writing

To me, professional writing is a set of reading, writing, analytical, and 21st century skills paired with an attitude of adaptability that make a person adept at communicating in the work place and producing content. For me, professional writing is a set of added skills to my future teaching career. It is also versatility to my degree so that I can switch into another field if I don't want to teach my entire career. It is an undergraduate degree with a variety of graduate degrees available for the stacking. Professional writing brings opportunity to me by providing flexibility in my academic and professional career. After taking 306 and starting off this semester in 515, I have added the ideas of advocacy and user experience to what professional writing means to me. Professional writers can advocate for the business they work for, their clientele, or both. Professional writers have the ability to communicate and should use that ability to speak on behalf of those who need their vo

Think “Experience Architecture”

At the beginning of this class, we were assigned readings and videos about airports in order to conceptualize the main theme of the course, experience architecture. Experience architecture is the design of spaces (architecture) for users (experience), such as an airport. In de Botton's work, "A Week at the Airport," de Botton addresses a doubt about experience architecture that sheds light on the scope in which the concept applies. "Standing before costly objects of technological beauty, we may be tempted to reject the possibility of awe, for fear that we could grow stupid through admiration...[and] yet to refuse to be awed at all might in the end be merely another kind of foolishness. In a world full of a chaos and irregularity, the terminal seemed a worthy and intriguing refuge of elegance and logic." (de Botton, 2009, p. 3-4). Simply put, experience architecture is design that is meant for the experience of the user. De Botton communicates this through an exp

The Deeper Value of Group Reports

For this capstone writing course, we were asked to put together a team of 3 or 4 classmates in which we would design materials that could be used for user-testing and then make a report about whatever we are testing. My group has four people, and we plan to analyze three different website-building tools: Wix, Weebly, and WordPress–the three "w's" of amateur website building. Each member is responsible for learning about one of the aforementioned website-building tools and the fourth member is responsible for bringing in information about website building in general. This is an especially important piece because the fourth member's general knowledge will help us other three members to have a standard to compare our respective sites to, rather than simply comparing three tools to each other. In other words, the general knowledge and research for website-building tools gives context to what the other three of us (who are analyzing specific sites) should look for. For th

Teamwork

Everyone is familiar with the classic example of high-school group work where, typically, one or two students are forced to carry the weight of the team. Often times this group dynamic is frustrating for the students doing all of the work, and it does nothing to really benefit the students who are slacking off. In my experience, these groups have usually been predetermined, and therefore the dynamic is unavoidable. In high school, I have been a part of many dysfunctional groups that share some key characteristics. These groups usually lacked clear group roles or a clear purpose for the project, the project lacked structure, or nobody knew each other. These are all important aspects of having a healthy, well-balanced group. Clear group roles are important for allowing group members to know what exactly their expectations are. My first ever group project at Purdue was for a Chemistry lab. While we were not entirely functional, we did have group roles that worked for us. We assigned role

The Future of Technical Writing

Searching for jobs today can be difficult, especially with the ongoing pandemic. The future of technical writing is arguably changing, as we have discussed throughout class, and as soon-to-be graduates, it is important for us to remain diligent when assessing the future of technical writing positions. Here, I have researched more into the future of technical writing regarding AI, usability, and social media. One debate regarding the future of technical writing is whether or not traditional technical writers will be replaced by automated writing software. According to an article from Zoomin, automated writing programs are unable to entirely replace technical writers due to the nature of human communication; technical writers are necessary for analyzing the audience and tailoring content to that audience. Since automated writing is not able to replace writers yet, the article suggests that technical writers can use automation to help increase the value of their work. Bringing in automat