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, Kitty O Locker as well as student made surveys. The memo will cover the importance of learning how to write in professional situations through class goals, where students learn how to adapt, think critically, and self evaluate. 

 

Executing Class Goals: Enhance Writing in Professional Situations 

The W231 class project number two is structured around three main class goals, to be sure students learn how to write in professional situations. The three specific goals were composed of understanding the meaning of professional writing, writing in professional situations, and identifying oneself . In the W231 class we broke those 3 main class goals into multiple sub categories. 

 

The sub categories that are covered in this memo consist of: 

- Adapting to situations 

- Thinking critically about rhetorical concerns 

- Self-evaluate and collaboration  

 

Understanding the meaning of professional writing: Adapt to situations  

The team created a local study to gain information on the IUPUI student population. In order to get as many results as we could, we had to find a way to send out surveys to a large mass of people at a time. One of the ideas that we had was to contact Dr. Kathleen Marrs, and ask if she would share the survey with her classes. We wanted to specifically target her classes, since a large majority of the IUPUI had her class as a prerequisite. The team decided I would write an email to Dr. Marrs asking to collaborate with us. I first wrote an email to get started, but I realized I did not use business writing so I re-evaluated it.

Before Applying  the learned concept of formal emails using you attitude and parallel lists 

- Good afternoon Dr. Mars, 

- I wanted to email you and ask if you could share the survey I created with your class.

- The  survey I created consists of questions over a four year plan, thoughts of advisors, and thoughts on an e-advising tool. 

 

Before learning about “you attitude” and parallel lists, my knowledge of professional writing was long texts with no space, and more concentrated on myself, instead of being inclusive. 

 

After Applying the learned concept of formal emails using you attitude and parallel lists 

- Good Afternoon Dr. Mars:

- In W231, we created a survey for students to take, and we wanted to know if you would be willing to collaborate with us by sending it to your classes, to get as much feedback as possible from students.  

- The survey consisted:

- Thoughts four year plan

- Thoughts of advisors

- Thoughts of an e-advising 

 

Biology 101 benefits consists of:

- Happier students

- Focused students

 

When I applied you attitude, benefits for Dr. Marrs class, parallel lists, and made the paragraphs short, it looked more appealing to the eye. The purpose of giving benefits and making the email appealing was a strategy to create goodwill with Dr. Marrs to better the chances of collaboration. “Benefiting the reader is very important in the ideas of showing overall respect as well as building goodwill with the reader/client. Making language bias-free is one way to help bring goodwill to the client you are writing to”(Locker, 2013, p. 71). After sending the email, I decided to ask a few of my close friends to fill out the survey as well. As I started to write I noticed that when talking to my friends compared to Dr. Marrs , it was less formal. I did not compile lists, write with headings, and did not have you attitude. This change in audience called for a different style of writing. Since I already had a foundational friendship with my peers I did not need to add benefits, or lists in order for them to agree to work with me. 

Writing in Professional Situations: Think Critically About Rhetorical Concerns 

As the organizer and designer of the team, I had to critically think about the tasks that the team would have to later complete. I wanted to be sure that the team and I had access to a well organized and clear area with all of our team documents, so it could later be used as a template to build a recommendation report website. During the first half of the semester we were taught  "A well designed document is easier to read and builds goodwill. To make a document visually attractive" (Locker, 2013, p. 16). With the semester tasks for the team gathered and each person’s goals.

 

 I organized the google doc folder by:

- Colored Folders 

- People

- Tasks 

- Website musts

 

A key factor into building these folders was the skill learned about Headings and Subheadings. Instead of directly using heading and subheading, I turned the idea to folders. So, we have a main “Group Folder”, representing the heading and then “names”, “website must haves, and miscellaneous tasks as a sub folder, which represents a subheading. Once every piece of information had its own specific spot, everyone knew exactly where topics were found. With having such an organized area for all documents, it was easier and a time saver to build a website. 

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Identifying Oneself: Self-evaluate and Collaboration

As the team was gathering information on how to improve undergraduate advising I wanted to take a different approach. I started by compiling what I personally thought were some limitations on advising at IUPUI. 

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Some of the limitations I thought of:

- Not enough time during meetings 

- Having multiple advisors 

- Poor communication between advisors

 

Once I saw a list compiled together, I wanted to self-evaluate my list, and see if the student or advisor population  at IUPUI felt the same way. To find this information the team collaborated with IUPUI peers by creating specific survey questions over this topic. Our results showed that other advisors and students thought similarly to me by stating “We do not have enough time with each student” (advisor survey) as well as “I feel like during our meetings, they rush me.” (student survey ) This self evaluation is where the idea of analyzing the obstacle of time management started. I started my research with basic terms on search engines such as Proquest and google scholar. 

 

Before learning about Boolean search variables: Basic terms  

- The importance of a four year degree

- Advisor impact on students 

- Undergraduate graduation rate 

- Undergraduate student advising 

 

Before learning about Boolean search terms I was finding over 400,000 cites to analyze and it was too much information to take in at once. Some of those sources were not specific while some weren’t on the same topic I was trying to gather information on.  

 

After learning about Boolean search variables: Specific terms 

- "Advisors role" AND "improve advising" AND undergraduate

-  “Undergraduate mentorship improvement” AND advising

- “Four year plan” AND “improving graduation rates” 

- “Advising Impact” AND “on students”

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After incorporating the Boolean search variables, I was getting results as low as 10 articles, specifically related to my topics. This variable led to better research on improving times spent during student and advisor meetings. Due to having the knowledge of boolean search variables I was able to narrow my analysis topic over “Advocating for a Four Year Plan”, which was found to be a solution to saving time for both advisors and students during their meetings.