ENGL 420: Business Writing

I suppose that the reading this week consists of the documents that the groups produced and the forms that we filled out for the project. I felt that the documents that the groups made were very professional looking. The health and safety manual that one group made was an ambitious project and they obviously spent much time on it. Some of the questions in the Collaboration Evaluation and Project Assessment documents really made me think about this final project and what we were supposed to learn from it. For example, the question about what we learned from the client.

Although the Oral Presentations powerpoint had both its good and bad points. I found it very helpful in determining what to include in our presentation. At first, I wasn’t sure where to start with the presentation (other than that it should be aimed at the client of course). Reading through this powepoint presentation gave me some direction. Starting with slide 5 it becomes helpful, before that are things that are either obvious or things that I don’t think most people actually sit down and think about. An example of this is the distance between the speaker and the listeners.

Our team has been busy this week working on learning exactly what our client expected and needed from the flyer we are creating for them. Our client, Patti O’Callaghan, director of Justice Services at Lafayette Urban Ministry (LUM), met with us on April 9, 2008. In this meeting we discussed our proposal on a new and updated low-income tax assistance program flyer. We discussed what will be included in the flyer and how the information will be worded to allow everybody to understand the benefits of this program. Patti accepted our proposal with no changes.

This week was very difficult for our group because we had a hard time getting a client. We secured our client (the Lafayette Urban Ministry) Wednesday evening, but up until then, we were still wondering if we would have one. Our first meeting with the client is today.

I think that the reading for this week will be very helpful in writing our proposal. I particularly liked the part in PWOnline giving information on what should be included in each section of the proposal. I also think the sample proposals will be helpful when we actually begin writing.

1. Lafayette Urban Ministry: I have worked with LUM before doing free tax preparation for low-income taxpayers and the elderly. They have many programs that help the community, but many members of the community are not aware of them. We could create brochures or some other form of advertisement that can be used to get information out about one or more of their programs.

The reading for this week is the project itself. The information on Client Criteria is going to be very helpful in determining which clients might be good to choose for the project. After reading the Service Learning Project Description I believe this will be, by far, the most challenging project of the semester. It will be challenging to approach someone in the community and to continue to work with them throughout the rest of the semester.

We completed our rough draft in time for class, but it was a difficult process. Because of our schedules we could only meet as a group once during the week. This made it hard get it done, so our rough draft, in some ways, is very rough. However, I think it is a good start and as a team we have already identified some places that we know need a little more work.

My responsibility for the white paper is to work along with another team member on the solutions section. So far, I have completed my part of the detailed outline and I have the majority of my research done. I plan to begin writing the paper tonight.

I have mixed feelings about the readings this week. The example white papers have given me a good general idea about how to set up our white paper and on how it should (or should not) look. I feel that I have a better understanding of what should be included in each section and what type of wording I should use. I have not found the booklet on Group Work and Collaboration helpful. I skimmed through it, but none of the information was new to me. Also, I feel that even though you know the phases a group goes through; it does not stop the group from having problems.