W231 Professional Writing Skills Retrospective Memo

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DATE: 8th February 2022

 

TO: Debbie Oesch-Minor

 

FROM: Jada White

 

SUBJECT: Surrounded By IUPUI Plus: Focussing on Correspondences, Peer Review, Visuals, and Responses 

 

 

The information brought to you in this memo is information taught to students in IUPUI’s W231 class. All information was given with the help of Professor Debbie Oesch-Minor and Kitty O Locker.   The memo will cover the purpose of why this course is surrounded by the IUPUI plus, where students will learn how to communicate, innovate, problem solve, and become a community contributor. 

 

IUPUI Plus: Connecting the Ideas of 4 Puzzles Pieces to W231 Assignments 

The School of IUPUI bases their classes around the IUPUI plus to be sure that their undergrad students are learning with success. This plus includes four component puzzle pieces including communicating, innovating, problem solving, and becoming a community contributor. In the W231 class we go through a process for our first writing project. These assignments and four components match up like the following: 

• Communicate: Persuading a business to work with you

• Innovate: Creating a Visual Pitch 

• Problem solve: how to take negative feedback and looking at them as a positive

• Community Contributor: Peer review, and giving constructive feedback 

 

Communicator: Process of Writing the Correspondence to a Business 

IUPUI’s first component piece is Communication this is where their student will learn how to:

• Evaluates Information 

• Listens Actively 

• Builds Relationships 

• Conveys Ideas Effectively 

 

W231 all starts with Writing a correspondence, which is a persuasive writing/email that grabs the attention of whomever you are writing towards. To start, Kitty Locker talks about “Benefiting the reader”, by doing this the business has a reason to be intrigued. “Benefitting the reader is very important in the ideas of showing overall respect as well as building goodwill with the reader/client” (Loker, 2013, p. 71). When writing towards a business, you want to show your respect but also get their attention, especially if they have never met you before. 

 

While grabbing the attention, you also want to explain what you're writing about. This should include the project information, their benefits, and what you need from them. You will want to have all of this information organized and concise so they know exactly what they are getting themselves into. 

 After your first correspondence, you will have built a new relationship with someone or maybe even strengthened a relationship by showing common interests for the business.

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Community Contributor: Peer Review, and Receiving Constructive Feedback

IUPUI’s Second component piece is Community Contributor: This is where students will be able to:

• Builds Community 

• Respectfully Engages Own and Others Work

• Behaves Ethically 

 

Incorporate these factors into the class there is Peer Review. For this class, you are given a worksheet and you write your information on it and you switch with a partner. “It treats the receiver as a person, not a number. It cements a good relationship between the communicator and the receiver” (Locker, 2016, p. 12). Though the book talks about this in a client view it can also be applied to your peers. For instance, when looking at my first draft of my correspondence I had wrote, “As previously described, this is an IUPUI student-led project over the course of 10 weeks”, and it sounded perfect, to me. 

 

When peer reviewing my partner gave back feedback and stated that it was written well, but to make it stronger, she suggested taking out “As previously described”. Beforehand, it sounded perfectly fine, but after rewriting it to “This is an IUPUI student-led project over the course of 10 weeks” it sounded less intimidated and more confident. 

 

When Peer review it’s all tied to being respectful to those around you and building relationships and growing together as a community. It may be frustrating but you learn how to give constructive feedback in a positive way.

 

Innovator: Creating a Persuasive Visual and Reading the Audience 

IUPUI’s third component piece is Innovator: This is where students will be able to:

• Investigate

• Create/design 

• Make Decisions  

 

Once Finding a business to collaborate with, it’s time to find a team to investigate with. This is where the Visual persuasion comes in place. “A well designed document is easier to read and builds goodwill” (Locker, 2013, p. 16)  You will want to keep the visual clean, but also be able to read your audience. For instance, I made a video with three specific colors, blue, orange, and yellow, so that it would be bright like the class was. To make my visual not extremely serious I made it an animation. These components will persuade the audience that like this type of criteria.

 

Problem Solving: Receiving Three No Responses and Looking at the Positives

IUPUI’s fourth component piece is Problem Solving: This is where students will be able to:

• Think critically about

• Analyze 

• Persevere 

 

During this course most will learn how to cope with receiving negative feedback. For instance, three emails were sent out to three separate businesses and a response was never given. Which, for most cases seems extremely negative however, “ In most situations, however, it’s better to be positive” (Locker, 2015, p.63). The book explains that we must not focus on the negatives but rather focus on what was positive and in this case it’s everything we have learned. We have learned to think critically on communicating with others - analyzing what needs to be fixed in our writings while peer reviewing - move forward with our head up and a positive attitude.