Dear Reader,

The experience that I had in the course was different than any other that I have had in my

academic career. This course was not as much about assignment after assignment that served

only one purpose (a number in a gradebook) as most of my college classes have been. This

course involved a semester long cumulative process that was eventually compiled into my final

project that is my E-Portfolio. Also, much of the work was helpful in leading up to the biggest

aspect of the E-Portfolio, the Extended Inquiry Project.

All assignments completed throughout the semester served as grades themselves, but

were also necessary in completing my final E-Portfolio. Some of the most important of these

assignments completed are essays. Essays include assignments such as my Topic Proposal, my

Annotated Bibliography, and my Extended Inquiry Project. This was interesting because the

Topic Proposal and Annotated Bibliography were both assigned to help me with the completion

of my Extended Inquiry Project. Each of these essays involved processes for themselves. The

first of these essays was the Topic Proposal. For this assignment, I did initial research on my

topic that I used to write my proposal that served as somewhat of a guide for how I planned to

complete my Extended Inquiry Project. With the Annotated Bibliography, I broke down four

sources that I could use for my Extended Inquiry Project and explained how they related to my

topic and could be useful. Of the four sources, three types of sources were addressed. These

included; a developed article from a popular source, a scholarly or peer-reviewed journal, and a

reliable website. The first draft of my Extended Inquiry Project was also an important essay as it

was the first time that I put together my research. Each of these assignments were peer-reviewed

by my two group members, just as I reviewed theirs, and revised. Peer-review was an important
aspect of this course that helped me take the ideas of others and apply them to my own ideas. I

was assigned six studios in the class that represented the fourth credit hour. What was great

about this was that each studio served as an aid to the completion of the essays. Also, to begin

every class we would complete a free-write. In these free-writings we were to write about

whatever came to mind, but quite often they were designed for the writing to reflect our topics.

These were completed in our daybooks, where we also completed reflections on assigned

readings and other assignments. We also were assigned with weekly blog posts, where we would

reflect on assigned readings or videos. We were also able to post other reflections that were not

assigned to us on our blogs. As a whole, each section of assignments served a key purpose in

developing me as a learner, researcher, writer, etc.

The most important work in the class in my opinion is the completion of the E-Portfolio.

I know that sounds weird because the E-Portfolio does not seem like much work it just seems

like putting all of the semesters work together. But in reality each of these assignments alone are

far less important by themselves, even the final Extended Inquiry Project. Constructing the final

E-Portfolio project was by far the most important assignment of the year because it helped me

learn to work with technology. I was able to build my own website which is something that I did

not know that I was capable of. Constructing it helped my organizational skills greatly, and this

will be something that will help boost my resume for future jobs or internships.

The biggest strength in my writing has always been my ability to free-write. I have

always been good at writing about things that I am knowledgeable about. This is why I was

always good at writing throughout grade school and scored well on the writing section of my

SAT which ultimately placed me in this course. It is definitely a strength of mine to express my

thoughts based off of a prompt on paper. With that being said a weakness of mine in writing has
always been constructing research papers. I have never done very well on research papers in my

life not matter how much time and effort I put into them. Even if I can find great research

applicable for the paper that I am writing, I never produce the information the on to my paper the

way I want to. This weakness is something that I believe has actually been improved greatly by

my work on the Extended Inquiry Project. Every research paper that I had ever written prior to

this one was just assigned and given a due day with no work leading up to it. This coursework

helped me learn important strategies for writing research papers. I think that the most important

of these strategies is doing annotated bibliographies with sources to break them down and learn

the purpose of each of them.

SLOs are the Student Learning Outcomes that the University Writing Program laid out

for this course. Translating them was an important studio that we were to complete early in the

semester to help us better understand what we the department hoped for us to learn from the

course material. These SLOs include Rhetorical Knowledge, Critical Reading, Composing

Processes, Knowledge of Conventions, and Critical Reflection. An area in which I feel that I

have progressed greatly is in Critical Reading. This course has taught me to read everything with

a sense of having an open mind, but also to question what I am reading and consider different

opinions or points of view. I have also greatly progressed with Composing Processes. This class

does a great job of teaching that processes are definitely a necessary part of completing projects.

It provides great examples of processes to go through in order to create a successful final

product. The last of these outcomes that I feel I have progressed is in Critical Reflection. I feel

that I am better able to recognize how I feel about something that I have read. Also I feel that I

am better at taking advice from others and using it to produce better writing.
 I faced more challenges in this course than I thought that I would coming in. Even after

thinking that I had chosen the perfect topic for my Extended Inquiry Project, it cause some road

blocks that I had to go through. This happened especially in my Topic Proposal. When doing

my Topic Proposal, I realized that I had to change the way that I wanted to write my Extended

Inquiry Project. This was because there was not enough research done on the financial aspect of

the sports industries, which I initially thought was going to be the main point of my essay. I

continued to face challenges trying to figure out how to keep my topic mainly the same and still

be able to find enough research. I worked hard and ultimately decided to focus on the flaws in

my topic that needed to be addressed, and why.

The biggest thing that I will take from this class moving forward is the ability to be

patient with writing processes. With things that I write in the future, I will have ideas of things

to do to help me write a better paper including things like the Annotated Bibliography, peer-

review, etc. I will also take away organizational and technological skills in which I developed by

keeping a blog, and creating an E-Portfolio.

Sincerely,

Will Biesecker