CLO’S

Course Learning Outcome #1:

“Acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility.”  This is the first course learning outcome where, as a class, we helped each other with every assignment through blackboard and peer review. For instance, my technical description tool needed to be changed from a ruler to a Vernier caliper because it would be more detailed. In my class, Courtni and Adem really solidified why I changed my tool and made me more comfortable with the comments below.

”Looks like we both went back to the drawing board for our artifacts.  Although I still think the ruler could have worked for you it is important for you to be comfortable with your artifact.  It seems like this Caliper will have more of a physical description than a ruler, and propbably more instructions on how to use it!  So that should help you get those four pages.  Coming from a standpoint of not knowing what this actually looks like or does, GRAPHICS WILL SAVE YOU! lol definitley consider using a labeled diagram.  Good luck writing!” – Courtni

“I think you made a smart choice to be honest with you. I remember when you told me that your artifact was a ruler and I was puzzled and told you that it would be tough to complete pages of technical writing on it. I mean me personally, I can’t…because it’s a ruler. You could only say so much about a ruler. Now swapping it out for a more sophisticated measuring tool like that helps. Keep me posted on it, I like it.” – Adem

This helped me a lot towards the end of my project because they made me realize that the Vernier Caliper was a great choice and would be excited to read about it. Peer review and comments such as this helped me progress as a writer throughout the semester because it gave me a new perspective and tone when writing my projects. Comments, like the ones above, made my writing better because they allowed me to think about a whole new perspective that I could never think of. Along with this, each person in our group needed to know their specific roles. For the lab report, we divided the work based on what we felt comfortable writing. For the project proposal, we did the same thing but we also created a google drive document where we all created the powerpoints and presented each sections.

Course Learning Outcome #2:

“Enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment.”  Throughout the semester the whole class participated in peer review and peer editing along with taking notes from different PowerPoints on how to revise papers.  Towards the beginning of the semester, my work was sloppy and a lot of peer review was needed, but towards the end of the semester my work has only a few minor errors.  After every draft, we gave one copy of our draft to each of our group members and one copy to our professor. This was one of the most useful parts of the class where through peer review, other people from the group could give their point of view in terms of feedback. Proofreading my work has always been a part of my writing process, but now with the help of my group members it was a lot easier.

For our groups survival pods proposal, Professor Carr commented that some of the pages should be organized differently and be organized in a technical description manner.

Figure 2

Course Learning Outcome #3:

“Negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation.”  I accomplished this CLO throughout the semester by writing reflection papers describing which CLO’s I accomplished. This was explained through writing audience analysis papers and charts. I have learned the meaning of audience and how to format my writing based on certain people reading my documents. Through the rhetorical devices I have been able, throughout the semester, to write pieces of work that are credible and that appeal to every reader based on their level of experience. I first started by learning the definitions of stance, genre, purpose, exigence, medium, and audience. After this, I explained each rhetorical device throughout the semesters in my reflection papers. My lab report for example I wrote:

“The purpose of my lab report was to educate future physics students and current students on how to write a correct lab report that is formatted properly. I also want to educate those that do not know about the lab and its components. The main reason I wrote this was to learn myself on how to create a lab report properly because as a freshman, I have not taken a physics class yet in my mechanical engineering track. Mechanical engineers need to understand how a pendulum works and how it involves SHM and acceleration due to gravity.

The exigence surrounding this consideration comes from my high school physics 1 and 2 classes where I have completed a pendulum lab and have written high school level reports on it. I have never done a college lab report until now. In high school, I was the leader of my group and we got an A+ with all the details and explanations that went into the report so I decided to use the pendulum lab as topic for our lab report in this class.” These are just 2 examples of rhetorical devices, but as you can see I was a little confused towards the beginning of the semester since I have never done a reflection piece. Below is my Project Proposal reflection essay where you can see that I improved on explaining each rhetorical device and how they tie into the paper, as a whole.

The link to my reflection paper to my Project Proposal is below:

Reflection Paper Final

Course Learning Outcome #4:

“Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.”  Throughout the semester, my group created a group chat where we shared ideas for each project and revise each other’s work. Along with this we participated in group FaceTime calls and used google drive to review each other’s work. On blackboard, each group communicated with each other by posting comments under our group’s work throughout the reviewing process to give us a new writing perspective. Towards the beginning, we didn’t collaborate as much with the lab report but at the end of the semester we got an A+ on our presentation which shows our progression as a group and how we successfully worked together. Along with this, for our final project proposal we created a google slides document where we all could review what we have accomplished while talking on a group phone call. Here we created edits and practiced our presentations so we can show our ability to work as a team.

Course Learning Outcome #5:

“Engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond.”  As a class we accomplished this by writing genre analysis work for each sample essay before every project. This allowed us to break down the proposals to completely understand how to organize our work and what to write about. Underneath is an example from my genre analysis before the technical proposal.

Figure 3

Here I wrote about the purpose, the outcomes, and how the group organized their work to see how my group should organize our final project. Along with this we referenced the Sexy Communication Textbook found on blackboard that explained how to detail our writing and help us with APA formatting.

Course Learning Outcome #6:

“Formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing.”  For me, this was the hardest CLO to do because in the beginning of the semester, I had trouble with understanding stance and what it meant. I still had issues throughout the course with this rhetorical device, but have gotten better with it today through my writing. Our best stance was for our Survival Pods project where we passionately described why we wrote about this topic and our opinion towards this. “My stance, or attitude, on the Survival Pod project proposal is that not so many people know about how Survival Pods can solve the problem of human safety during a tsunami. I want to show how this project could be useful in the future and have the government federally fund this to benefit both parties.” 

At the beginning of the semester, I  wouldn’t have been able to explain my stance in my letter, but this shows how I have evolved as a writer.

Course Learning Outcome #7:

“Practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects.”  This was one of my favorite CLO’s where, as a class we learned how to research properly and locate credible sources. We devoted a class to learning how to use the CCNY database in the library and learning which sources were credible and which ones were not. Throughout the semester, I had great sources but they were only based on google. For our final project, I found a source from the LCC website describing Survival Pod prototypes, what they were, and how they passed certain tests. This was the most referenced source in our project because the information was clear, detail, and self-explanatory.

Source: http://pages.mscsoftware.com/rs/mscsoftware/images/Paper_Survival%20Capsule%20Paper05052013.pdf

Course Learning Outcome #8:

“Strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources).”  This was one of my biggest problems because I have been accustomed to using MLA formatting on every paper, but now APA is being used. It is more efficient just very difficult, especially for an incoming freshman. I had trouble with my work because of summarizing, reference page errors, and quoting correctly. But I managed to fix each error after my draft work such as below.

Figure 4

In this case, for my final piece I put quotation marks around the quote. I cited so many sources in my essays that I forgot to cite this one. That was my issue, but now I am comfortable with using APA formatting.