Project Debrief

Summary

Before taking ENG 312, Introduction to Business Writing, with professor Lance Cummings, I wasn't sure of what to expect. Now, as the semester is wrapping up, I'm blown away by how much I've learned about establishing a professional online presence for myself. The class was shockingly modern, taking place entirely online, and across a variety of platforms relevant to the real online business world of today. It was also an ETEAL applied learning course. ETEAL stands for Experiencing Transformational Education through Applied Learning, and taking this class was certainly a transformative experience! We worked with Nest Realty, a real local realty agency, in order to analyze and assess the company's presence across social media. In doing this, I gained real experience working with a local business, and I was able to see firsthand what it takes in order for a modern business to establish a professional presence online.

In professor Cummings' class, I also learned to incorporate the use of Google Docs, Google Drive, Google Slides, Blogger and a plethora of other cutting edge social media and writing platforms into my own everyday writing process. Because modern business writers are beginning to work in more and more of an online context, experience working with popular internet based writing platforms is a huge benefit to anyone looking to turn business writing into a career, and so I think that having acquired these skills will be very valuable to me in the future.

Application of Learning Outcomes

According to the syllabus for ENG 312, one of the learning outcomes for the course was to "employ fundamental rhetorical principles to analyze the persuasive and communicative strategies of business writing in multiple contexts, using multiple genres." In working on our final ETEAL applied learning project, as well as the multiple other class projects that we worked on as preparation, this is exactly what we accomplished.

The ETEAL applied learning project for this class involved evaluating the social media presence of Nest Reality. The class was divided into small independent groups, and in these groups, we were given free reign to conduct our own research and to assess Nest's online presence in relation to our own findings. The textbook for the class, entitled Business Communication: Polishing Your Professional Presence, provided the framework within which we applied various rhetorical principles that we studied as a class throughout the semester.

Our final products included a formal written report,  a brief slidecast detailing a specific important aspect of our findings, as well as a reflective essay in which we were asked to evaluate our personal experiences  participating in the project. For each of these parts of the project we were required to entirely re-contextualize our reports in order to suit the specific circumstances at hand. Sometimes this was really challenging for me, but it helped me learn to always look at my writing from multiple angles.

Throughout the course, we were also required to direct all of our writings toward a specific audience. Having a specific audience to address made the writing that we did in this class feel like it had a real purpose, and this often made it a lot easier for me to logically and effectively express what it was that I wanted to say.

Conclusion

Overall, I am very pleased with the improvements that I have noticed in my writing skills after having taken this course. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to participate in an ETEAL applied learning course, and I would recommend the experience to other students looking to learn in an online hands on context!