Reflection on Project 1

In this post I will reflection on Project 1. Wow that sounded so boring... I am actually very excited this project is complete!!!! (see picture below)

• Challenges I faced... My biggest challenge was determining how to organize all the information I had gathered during research into an effective and clear QRG. I solved this by writing ideas down on notecards and arranging thoughts from there. I also struggled with writing commentary that was not biased towards one side. I solved this problem by trying to write analysis that expanded on ideas presented by the sources, and not creating my own opinions on one side of the controversy.

• My successes.... I was very successful in having a lot of quote and sources to include throughout my QRG. This is because I spent a lot of time and effort finding good sources during the research period. Also, I was able to find very effective images to include throughout my QRG. I was able to do this by typing in key words that really reflected the message I was trying to convey with my visuals. 

• What aspects of writing were most effective... I found hyperlinks to be very effective and I used many throughout my QRG. Because biological science is not a topic everyone is familiar with, hyperlinks made it possible to direct readers to extra information that I didn't have to go into detail about in my QRG. I really focused on keeping sentences and paragraphs short and concise. I think this helped make my QRG easier to read and look visually pleasing. Lastly the clarity section was most helpful form the Rules for Writers text book. Each section helped my writing tremendously because I struggle with small grammatical errors. 

• What aspects of writing were least effective... Social media sources did not work well with my topic, so I did not include them in my QRG. Also, having to evaluate the credibility was useful, but broke up the flow of ideas in the section. 

• How was this experience similar to past writing experiences... I have never experienced writing a piece like this before because it does not follow conventions of essays. Essays are the only form of writing I did in high school. However, writing a QRG is similar to a research essay. The process of gathering facts and organizing paragraphs by evidence and analysis. It was fun to have more freedom in the format and design. 

• How was this experience different to past writing experiences... This project was different than writing an essay because I did not having to take a side and persuade the audience. This made writing the QRG easier because you weren't concerned about only drawing facts from one side of the argument, you could include it all! Also, I enjoyed being able to add images to writing piece because I am a visual learner. Overall images really enhance the piece. 

• Would the skills used for this project be helpful in other coursework... I learned how to analyze a new genre, and how to find and comply with conventions. This is useful for future writing endeavors where I have to determine the genre of writing and make sure I satisfy the required conventions. Also, rhetorical strategies apply to all types of writing, so it is important to master these strategies now. 

Charma, Melody. "Joyful Girls." Nov. 22, 2010 via flickr. Creative Commons

Reflection:

After reading Lauren and Jenny's posts I learned that we all had a lot of similar experiences while completing project 1. One of these is the fact that finding a lot of sources during research was easy, but the difficult was organizing all of our ideas into a format that made sense for our controversy. We all had different ways of approaching this problem and all ended up with great final product. Also, we agreed that is the first time any of us have written a piece in the using QRG conventions. While skills we learned in high school helped prepare us to write the QRG, it was a completely different genre. I am very excited to have published my final draft, and I am very pleased with how it turned out.