ENGL 2116 Reflection Essay

During the course of ENGL 2116, I have learned how technical documents should look
like, as well as the useful functionality of word doc in designing papers. I do not know whether
my writing has improved over the course of this class, as I can not tell due to the technical form
of writing compared to essays.
There is another class that I am taking during this summer session, ITCS 3688:
Computers and Their Impact on Society, that I can tell my writing needs improvement in.
Although one paper’s topic is my personal ethics on the world, a type of topic I absolutely
despise as I do not like writing about myself. Then another paper was to be completed in under
an hour and I discovered I do not do well in reaching a large word limit under a time constraint.
The takeaway for improvements for me from that class would be to have less complex
sentences and improve my wording.

My goal for this class was probably to learn what technical communication is or pass the
class, to which both goals were accomplished by the end of this class. To me, technical
communication is to plainly explain to people about a solution to a problem with enough details
as possible.
There can be some improvements to the class, such as during the beginning have
detailed text instructions for the analysis assignments on what to do instead of verbally saying
them. Throughout the entirety of the class, I did not use the reaktion book at all for any of my
research or as a starting point. I do not think it should be a required text listed in the syllabus.
And maybe have the class start at another time that is not the morning.

Of all the assignments that I have completed for this class, the white paper would be my
greatest work. This is due to the design of looking similar to an official document as well as
discovering floating cities for my topic, island. The visualization packet could be another good
work, however, due to having to work with ‘haptic’ vision, it did not turn out to be good enough
with the vision I had for it. Unable to fulfill the vision I had for the packet, the quality and my
motivation suffered as a result.
A better result for the visualization packet would be to not focus entirely on the student’s
topic but guidelines on a different set of topics they can choose during the packet. As certain
students have questions about the packet on how to complete it due to their topic and its
conditions, such as storms, clouds or islands.
For the correspondence packet, having an example or explaining more in detail what the
email and letter should be than what the overview provided would help in determining the
students focus. Providing examples may lead to students to copy that example, it certainly does
not help students to not provide examples. And to me, the editing practices more or less
mislead me in what the content of the email and letter should be.

Overall, I have learned what this class offers and accomplished my goals for this class.
There can be improvements in my writing with sentence structure and just write more enough.
The class can certainly be improved by providing more guidance to students, especially for
some packets that are new or very short. It has been an ok summer and I thank you for teaching
this class.