One of the most beneficial learning outcomes of this course for me was the peer review feature. Engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process helped me see my own work and others’ works in a new way. While not every piece of feedback from my peers was helpful, the entire process helped change my overall view.

For example, comparing my hypothesis from the Lab Report assignment to my classmates’ hypotheses made me realize there are multiple ways to format a hypothesis while remaining accurate. I could tell my peers had the same realization because, at first, they seemed to think my phrasing was wrong but came to understand that while our formats were different, it was still correct. In my lab report my hypothesis was phrased as: “In the course of this experiment if performed right the angles of refraction should be lower than the angles of incidence and there will be total refraction once the laser passes the critical angle” and one of my peers phrased theirs like “For a record to be considered a success, it needs to be able to play music with reasonable clarity on its own”

The process of reviewing and editing other people’s work was helpful because it’s easier to notice someone else’s mistake than your own. It helped me note common mistakes that I will keep an eye out for in my own writing for future projects. These mistakes include using passive voice when active voice would be better, using a personal bias in a piece that is meant to be objective, and not achieving the right level of formality in a paper.

This class laid out the process of reading material, then creating a draft, and then adding revisions and edits. I feel like my revising and editing skills improved the most throughout this process. While the researching and drafting portions of the process were informative, I feel like I did not progress much because my skills were already relatively strong from previous classes.

Taking into account the professor’s notes increased the quality of my writing, particularly the readability. For example, in the Technical Description assignment, we wrote this semester, I got feedback on the formatting and was directed to change long, run-on paragraphs describing the subject of the paper (a TV remote) into bullet-pointed items. This was new to me because I didn’t know bullet points could be used in this kind of writing; it was useful because it made the paper flow better and was much easier to follow. In contrast, in the Lab Report assignment, the opposite was the case. The professor’s notes recommended changing a numbered list of procedures into a paragraph because this way, I could include more information and context. The difference in the two papers highlighted how varying formats and tones can be useful for different purposes. In this case, it was the difference between a descriptive piece of writing versus a set of instructions.

Additionally, this course enhanced my citation skills. While I have used APA formatting before, assignments like the Technical Description helped me practice and perfect this. Previously, I didn’t know that different genres of writing required different citation formats and I am grateful this class has educated me on that.
This class made me more aware of audience expectations and how genre, medium, and the rhetorical situation can be used to improve my writing. Specifically, the Task and Audience Analysis exercise formally introduced me to the concept of filtering content and tone for different audiences.

I used this awareness of the audience in the Engineering Proposal assignment when we had to make our project easy to understand and appealing to investors. This is a very practical ability because it is likely I will be in a situation in the future where I need to communicate what I’m working on in a succinct and efficient way in order to acquire funding.

This course increased my familiarity with how to identify verified sources and the best places to find them. This semester was my first time going through the school library to access academic journals. It was helpful to have this new resource and gain experience navigating the database.

These skills were helpful specifically in the Engineering Proposal assignment, especially when my team and I were looking into how complex equipment, like sensors, function. While these kinds of explanations may be available through basic Google searches, the sources may be unreliable. It’s very valuable to have sources that contain certified, peer-reviewed, and professional documents. On the other hand, Google was a helpful resource when the team was researching how much items that made up our invention, like cameras, would cost. Using Google, we could use readily available information to compare and aggregate pricing from many sources and come up with an average price point.

This class also expanded my understanding of what can be used as a source. The visuals presented by the professor in class, for instance, the YouTube video about building an obstacle course for squirrels, first seemed to be just a video for fun. Before this class, I wouldn’t have considered content on YouTube — especially content presented in a fun, casual, vlog-style way — to be useful in a classroom setting. But after the professor used this video to highlight the concepts of physics, engineering, and planning, I realized sources that may seem unprofessional at first glance, can still be helpful and educational. Furthermore, the use of these recreational content sort of tricks one’s brain to learn but does not feel like work or actually putting an effort since everything comes effortlessly.

Finally, the engineering department of City College is one of the most diverse subdivisions of the school offering a lot of students from multiple backgrounds and that indeed was a plus in most interactions. French being my first language does not just affect the way I speak English but also the way I think and that reflects in my writing. English has a lot more words than French which increases the precision of my sentences. For example, in the discussion posts, I find myself challenged sometimes to use the most precise words to convey my thoughts which would be a much easier task in French because many words could mean the same things and would just depend on the context.

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