ENGL 420: Business Writing

This week we didn’t have too much reading. We did the in class assignment where we worked on summarizing and making sentences more concise. I am terrible at this so even though I didn’t enjoy this activity I’m sure I needed it. Looking over the different white papers I think we have a good idea about what we want ours to look like. I know that Joey will be our designer and that is good because I know that it isn’t a job I would be any good at. I am looking forward to seeing what our outcome is like because I know that we have a lot of good information to work with.

I think that the Group Work and collaborative writing reading is very appropriate at this point in the semester because of the group project that we are currently doing. This article gives examples of good and bad group works which is very helpful because it gives you something to go off of so that you and your group are heading in the right direction. This reading also describes the group phases of forming, storming, planning, and norming. I learned about all of these my sophomore year in one of my OLS classes. It was a good reminder to see these in the reading.

This week in class we discussed the idea of group collaboration. There is a certain set of guidelines to follow to make sure that the group functions and is productive. UC Davis has created a booklet of Dos and Don’ts for making a group work well together. Some suggestions for a productive, functional group is to be considerate. Another idea they offer is to support the ideas of other people vocally. Nothing is worse than speaking in a group discussion and not have any responses. The group members should be aware of other’s feelings.

After reading through the booklet on groupwork, the thing that sticks out to me is that a group is not just task oriented, but also requires social focus as well. I have been in many groups over the course of my school and work careers, and some are just very much a "lets get this done, and never meet" type group, others are very much "let's do this as a team and make it the best we can".

This week’s reading offered several more white paper examples and a detailed booklet on group work and collaboration. I found the examples, as with previous examples, to be extremely helpful as I began creating the rough draft for our paper. As we discussed in class, the fuel example seemed to be done well, but it showed me what a white paper with a little too much design looks like. This example seemed to make it very easy for the audience to find the information which they were looking for. On the other extreme, the urine white paper example shows an under-designed white paper.

The reading for this week was very in depth about working in a group. It had everything you could possibly think of when forming a group. The part I found a little out of reach when forming groups is the time commitment it tells you to take. The booklet says the first meeting should be a few hours long. This is a little difficult with our group because we only have one day a week that all of us can meet. The do's and don'ts of the paper are very helpful in how a person should act within the group.

The reading that stood out this week for me was in section 4a in the Group Work and Collaborative Writing article. That section talked specifically about the basic principles of groups and the aspects of good and bad groups. I have been a group before just like the article describes as a bad group where there is that one person who does not do any work. They always skip out on meetings and do not feel the need to actively participate with the project.

This weeks readings where helpful, as usual. The most useful reading this week was simply reading over the sample white papers. I feel like without these papers, we would be a lot more lost. In class, going over these was very helpful. We were able to all talk about aspects that we liked and ones that we did not like in these papers. This will help when it comes time to put the end product together and make it all look good. We saw that the use of color, charts, and some quotations are good things.

There was only one real article that was scheduled for this week, but it actually goes into to great detail regarding group work. I liked this website because it really took the subject of group work step by step. This allowed me to become very acquainted with all of the facets of collaborating among peers or colleagues in a group. This booklet stated all the advantages and disadvantages of group work as well as solutions to avoid these drawbacks or any other activities that may be provide confusion among the group.

This week, we took a closer look at white papers. We reviewed a couple different examples. These gave me a better understanding of what white papers are and what they look like. Also, this week we started reading "Group Work and Collaboration." Within this reading I got a closer look at what group work is and effective collaboration. Collaboration is an important part to group work. Communication is a key to effective group work. Within in the reading they stated what a good group was and what a bad group was.