Final Reflections by Francis Salas

ENGL 219

Memo
To: Joseph Serio
From: Francis Salas
Date: 5/07/14
Re: Final Reflections

The following reflections will breakdown the five course outcomes that we were
expected to refine this semester. I will try my best to show my progress with these
outcomes through each of the projects. I chose the more methodical approach of going
through each outcome one by one to avoid being too broad and abstract.

Invention: First of all, for invention I came up with ideas for projects and followed
through to completion. But, the idea is the easy part. Anybody can have an idea about a
topic for a project, but after that a person has to start writing and honing that idea into
something more polished. Invention really comes to light with the peer reviews and
instructional assistant reviews, which help us to refine our project.

For project one the easy part was coming up with the idea. My idea came from the fact
that I am very good at carving pumpkins, and I also like doing it. This made it easy to
work on. The instructional assistant gave me an awesome review by reminding me that I
needed to have warnings for various different reasons. The IA review also stressed the
fact that I needed to be more multimodal in completion of this project. This was actually
the reason why I decided to add towards the end. For this project the peer reviews let me
know that I needed to format my paper a little better.

Project two was a different sort of challenge. I had many ideas, but I was having trouble
finding an idea with many sources to choose data from. Even the final idea that I chose
proved to be difficult as I had a difficult time obtaining the information that I needed and
wanted. This is where the invention part comes into play, because I finally decided on a
subject, but I then needed to decide an invent a way to utilize this subject so that I
could find plenty of relevant information. The instructional assistant reminded me about
citing my sources and provided links on the proper methods of doing that. The peer
reviews helped me to realize that my introduction needed some major help. One person
even told me to refer to the examples in the gallery, which was some sound advice that
helped me to refine my project a lot better.

The last project was by far the most difficult. In the end, I kind of think that I did too
much and just made it harder on myself. I had to do lots of revisions from my rough draft,
but the reviews were actually not very helpful this time around. I actually had to just
decide on my own what it was that needed to be fixed, and this was an example of
invention. I knew that I needed a better multimodal representation, but I just needed to
figure out how to implement this into the project. Overall, I spent a lot of time with this
project from start to finish.

Arrangement: At first glance, this course outcome seems like it is fairly easy implement.
Well, that was only the case for the first of my projects. The second two projects were a
bit of a challenge when trying to put an overall arrangement in document form.

Project one was the easiest one for me to arrange due to the overall nature of the project
and what was required. With setting up instructions it should be straightforward when
thinking about how to place pictures and graphics. The natural order that arises from
making instructions forces you to organize and arrange in a specific manner. The only
real issue that this project posed when it came to arrangement was basic document
formatting; font, bullets, and so on. Also, you were so right in noticing that my bullet list
for the list of tools did not match the picture.

The second project was not my largest, and it didnt demand as much time as project
three, but it left me stuck at a few points. Like I said before, I had a hard time finding
solid information for this project, which at times left me second guessing the entire idea.
This made it hard to find relevant graphs and statistics, but in the end it worked out and I
feel like the visual aids followed the flow of the document. I tried to follow the layout of
the examples on learn, and I think that I accomplished that.

Project three turned out to be very difficult to arrange. This project just kept growing to
the point where it was too massive. Due to the sheer size of information, I decided that
my layout should be book-like. This shows in the table of contents and the appendices.
The visual aids were not hard to find or place, because this project didnt really need any
distractions from the overall body of the document. I wanted people to see some pictures
to get a visual idea in their head of what I was aiming for, but then I wanted the text and
information to dominate.

Style: I feel that this goes right along with arrangement, almost to the point that they can
be merged. How I arranged my projects showed my style in the layout and overall tone of
the projects.

To start, the places where you can find my style in project one were in the font, the
pictures, the warnings, and even in the topic. No matter our personal style, we still had to
remain within the bounds of what an instructions project demands. For the portfolio
submission I decided to put borders on this project to make it look a little less boring.

Once again, when talking about style one must also talk about arrangement. So, for
project two I decided to use the picture with needles right at the beginning to immediately
use pathos in an attempt to grab attention. After that, I used pictures that complemented
and didnt distract from the information at hand. The style of the layout was meant to be
progressive and leading.

Due to the sheer size of project three, it was hard to have one overpowering stylistic
arrangement. Like I said before, the overall style was a book-like set-up which served the
purpose creating a distinctive path for the reader to follow. Also, like I stated in the
arrangement section, I didnt want the pictures to be a distraction from the main
information of the document. That is why they were in the beginning, and this was the
style that I used to provide some visual aids without taking away from the main point. I
ended up with way too much information, but most of it I felt needed to be used, so my
fianc gave me the bright idea to use the appendices.

Delivery: Before this class I had honestly never even heard the word multimodal. All of
the other writing classes that Ive taken have just been documents with maybe some
pictures. This class demanded more, and I can definitely see how this method of
delivering information is a necessity nowadays.

In the first project, I feel that my delivery was pretty solid. I think my pictures were good
and flowed with the document. You were right when you said that I should center some
of them, because it was a little distracting the way they were placed. I put links in for two
videos that I thought were entertaining. The videos werent necessarily along the lines of
my project due to how extreme they were, but they were attention grabbers.

For project two, I wanted to immediately grab attention and pull at peoples emotion.
That is why I put the picture of the needles right at the very beginning. This is another
example of how some of these outcomes cross lines. The placement of pictures and
graphs was my arrangement, but I also had to decide on the manner in which I wanted to
deliver the overall message. It is very hard to get it all right. I chose the chart with the
human bodies to give relevant information and to keep the reader from getting distracted.
Once again you found one of my obvious mistakes that I, for some reason couldnt see.
That was my methodology section which was just a list of topics.

I will say it over and over, the sheer size of project three made it very difficult to mold in
the right way. Delivery was probably the hardest thing about this project. I had to ask
myself, How can I incorporate the multimodal requirements without taking attention
away from the actual written information. This is the reason why I chose to only put
photos in at the beginning to give a mental image of speed bumps, and the kids on bikes
let you know why I wanted speed bumps. I would be telling a lie if I said that I hit my
mark 100% on the multimodal requirement, but I think I did ok. I think that my overall
organization of the paper enhanced my delivery and kept the reader focused.

Memory: This outcome is kind of self-explanatory in the sense that as you progress
through a course you learn new things, and you also learn how to apply those things. I
think that this outcome is about growth as a student, and building on past successes and
failures in order to better refine certain skills in a particular course.

Due to the fact that the instructions were the first project, memory would apply to past
classes. I already stated earlier that I had never heard the word multimodal before so I
had learn from this project the ways to implement this method. I was not entirely
effective in doing this. My project was overall a little plain looking and that is why I
added borders for the portfolio submission.

There were several things that project one taught me that I could then implement in
project two. It is easy to add pictures, but it hard to add complementary pictures. When
putting in a picture you must take into account spatial orientation along with relevance. I
learned from your comments on the first project that I needed to center my pictures. Also,
from looking at other students projects I figured out that I needed to not only put pictures
that appealed to emotion but also ones that added statistical information. These pictures
came in the form of graphs, charts, and the one with the human bodies. I can also point to
the fact that the IA review showed me that I forgot to include my citations.

The proposal project required tons of memory. First off, for project two you like my table
of contents, so it was a no brainer to include one in this project. I once again kept my
pictures centered to maintain symmetry and keep the reader focused. My fianc gave me
the idea for the appendices, but they are along the same lines as the FAQs in the first
project. They presented the opportunity to keep important information without taking
away from the body of the project. For my final submission I felt that all of the projects
were visually lacking. I gave them all borders, which is a minor adjustment but it made a
big difference.

Resume and Letter: I am keeping this project by itself way at the bottom because I feel
that out methods for this one should have been different. For one thing, there really isnt a
whole lot that we could do to make a one page resume multimodal. I put in a border to
make it look a little nicer, but other than that this project was straightforward. This was
by far the easiest of the projects due to the rigidity with the way that resumes and
application letters have to be. No matter what you do to it you must stay within certain
boundaries which has the effect of making it easier.

Overall: I learned a lot from this course that I will definitely be able to use in the future.
One of my favorite things that we had to do was create our own URL. You are right, this
is the method that we will have to use in the future for submitting documentation to
employers or things of that nature. My favorite project were the instructions, because I
like explaining things to people and helping them along with figuring things out. This
was our first opportunity to use multimodal aspects, and I enjoyed it. Thank you for an
awesome, but stressful semester, and I look forward to using the skills acquired in this
class for the rest of my collegiate career and the rest of my life.