Jason W. Ellis – ENG2575 OL88 Technical Writing, Spring 2021

Week 15

Greetings, all!

I want to wish you all the best of luck in our class, and your other classes, too!

As we close the book on this semester, I wanted to give you a few reminders to help you see things through:

All work is due by the end of the day on Wednesday, May 19.
The latest that I can receive your work is Tuesday, May 25 (email me by Wednesday, May 19 if you need this extra time).
Our last office hours will be on Wednesday from 3:00-5:00pm on Google Hangouts here.
To submit your team’s Collaborative Project:
One team member creates a Post on our OpenLab Course Site, which includes the title of your project, all contributing team members’ names, and a link to your team’s OpenLab Project Site. Make sure that you test this link after publishing your post.
- Your team’s OpenLab Project Site should include:
  - Link to Shared/Viewable Version of Research Report
  - Embed Presentation Video
  - Summarize Research Report across separate pages for Problem, Solutions, and Recommendations
  - Include an “About Us” page with bios, headshots, and links for all participating team members
Each team member has to email me your Individual Report on Collaboration (250-500 words).
Catch up on Individual Projects and email those revisions/make-ups directly.

If you have any questions, email me at jellis at citytech.cuny.edu or come to office hours this week!

Lecture, Week 14

We covered the following topics and links in this week’s lecture:

Please complete SET (now until May 14)
Wrapping Things Up
Maintain Communication, Don’t Drop the Ball, Follow Through on Commitments
Review How the Collaborative Project Fits Together
- Create Post on our OpenLab Course Site to Submit a link to your team’s OpenLab Project Site
  - Links to your OpenLab Project Site (Website)
    - Your OpenLab Project Site
      - Link to Shared/Viewable Version of Research Report
      - Embed Presentation Video
      - Summarize Research Report across separate pages for Problem, Solutions, and Recommendations
      - Include an “About Us” page with bios, headshots, and links for all participating team members
- Email Prof. Ellis your Individual Report on Collaboration (250-500 words)
Catch up on Individual Projects and email Prof. Ellis if submitted late or revised
Job Search Advice
Everything in the class is due Wednesday, May 19
Late work is accepted by Tuesday, May 25 (email Prof. Ellis by May 19 to ask for this extra time)
Prof. Ellis will have office hours Wed., May 12 and Wed., May 19

Lecture, Week 13

Material covered in this week’s lecture:

Don McMillan’s “Life After Death by Powerpoint”

Purdue OWL APA Site: Sample Paper (click on Sample Professional Paper for example)

Zoom Video Tutorials

OpenLab Help:

Reminders:

Official due date for all current and make-up work is Wednesday, May 19.
Last day that Prof. Ellis can accept late work is Tuesday, May 25 (students must email Prof. Ellis before May 19 to request this extension)
Please remember to complete the Student Evaluation of Teaching (open until May 14–check your campus email)

Lecture, Week 12

Useful links mentioned in this week’s lecture:

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 12

This week’s Weekly Writing Assignment continues to focus on the work that you are doing within your team on the Collaborative Project.

After talking with your team (synchronously or asynchronously), write a short memo together in your Google Drive Shared Folder in a new Google Doc. Address it to Prof. Ellis and use the subject, “Delegating Point Persons.” In the body of your memo, briefly write a few sentences that identify who is taking point on the each of the main parts of the Collaborative Project: orchestrating the Research Report, organizing the presentation, and setting up your OpenLab Project Site. These point persons are only responsible for communicating with team members about meeting self-imposed deadlines and responsibilities. Point persons are not responsible for all of the work. All of the work should be shared by all team members.

After completing the memo, all team members need to copy-and-paste the memo into a comment on this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment to receive credit (i.e., if you have four team members, all four team members need to copy-and-paste the one memo into a comment each added to this post for a total of four comments).

Lecture, Week 11

Extra credit: Literary Arts Festival
Continue Collaborative, Team-Based Project
Team Communication (follow-up)
Research Report
Discuss Homework (conduct and compile research for report) and Weekly Writing Assignment (each team member should independently write a short memo describing what research they will contribute/have found so far for the team’s research report)

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 11

This previous week, your team should have established a means of communication (e.g., text messaging, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, etc.) in addition to campus email, and your team should have discussed and selected a problem as the topic of your team’s Research Report. If you haven’t done these things yet, it’s important that you take care of them ASAP so that you have as much time as possible to focus on the project.

After establishing team communications and picking your Research Project’s problem, your team needs to delegate how each team member should be conducting and reporting back their research contributions to the Research Report document in your Google Drive Shared Folder. As discussed in this week’s lecture, all team members might research both the problem and its solutions, or some team members might research just the problem and others the solutions. How you divide these responsibilities is up to each team as long as all team members are contributing equal amounts of research and writing to the Research Report.

For this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, each team member should independently write a short memo of approximately 250 words and addressed to Prof. Ellis with the subject, “Research Responsibility,” that describing what research they will contribute/have found so far for the team’s research report.

Extra Credit: Literary Arts Festival video

If you couldn’t make it to the Literary Arts Festival last week but would like to earn the extra credit, you may watch the ~2 hour long event video above, write 250-words about your experience (who did you hear speak? whose work resonated with you? what did you take away from the event?), and email your response to Prof. Ellis (jellis at citytech.cuny.edu).

Lecture, Week 10

In addition the Google Drive folder detailed in this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment below, you should create a second Google Doc within that shared folder that you will use for writing your Research Report. It can also be used to collect your notes, research, and reference entries. Be sure to document all of your research so that quotes are properly quoted and given parenthetical citations and a bibliographic entry in APA format is added to the References list at the end. You can copy the following outline into this document as a guide for the general layout of your Research Report:

Introduction (topic and why your report is important) 

Objectives of the research (what were you attempting to do?) 

Method (methodology–what kinds of research did you do, how did you do it, and why is the research sound?) 

Results (what did you find in your research? facts, quotes, figures, interviews, surveys, etc.) 

Discussion (how do you interpret your results? what story does your data tell us? results and discussion can be combined, but title this section appropriately if you do so) 

Conclusions (what conclusions do you draw from your results and discussion? what is the significance of what you discovered?) 

Recommendations (what do you think should be done to solve the research problem based on your research? this section is what all of your work is leading up to.)

References

Also, here are some resources and examples that I discussed in this week’s lecture to help you with writing and designing your analytical research report.

Doodle (for finding meeting times for your team)
Explanations of report parts (look under Primary Research Report, but remember you are writing a secondary research report)
Example: Issues with Quantum Computing
Example: Research Report on 5G
Sample Research Report (note the layout and design)

Weekly Writing Assignment, Week 10

After watching this week’s lecture, your team should do the following:

Establish another communication channel for team discussion besides email (you may use email, but you should have another channel that supports easier and faster communication among the team members).
Discuss and decide amongst yourself which project your team chooses from last week’s brainstorming exercise.
Create a shared folder on Google Drive and add all team members to the folder as Editors
One team member should create a Google Doc in the shared folder. In this document, write a brief memo with TO (Prof. Ellis), FROM (all team members’ first and last names), DATE, SUBJECT (Collaborative Project Topic). In the content area, write a few sentences describing the scientific or technical problem that you will research for your collaborative project. Include any information about how your deliberations and discussion might have focused your topic from what one of your team members’ presented in the brainstorming exercise.
Each team member should copy-and-paste your completed memo into a comment made to this Weekly Writing Assignment post. This demonstrates that all team members can access your shared Google Drive folder and its files.

For this week’s homework, you should discuss how to begin your research. Perhaps delegate one resource to each team member to find a few possible sources each. For example, one team member should look in IEEExplore, one team member should look in Academic Search Complete, etc. for library-based resources, including also General OneFile (Gale), Ebook Central, and others here.

Author: Jason W. Ellis