Karen Morris
English 1102-XX
4 May 2011
Semester Reflection
Signing up for another English hybrid class was not a hard decision. I found that with English 1101, I enjoyed only meeting once a week. I knew, however, that this class would require a lot of time and effort outside of class, but I was okay with that. English is actually my strongest subject and it always has been, therefore, writing papers on my own time would not be unmanageable. Although I am not tech-savvy, I am capable of using technology as hybrid classes require. As for my expectations of the class, it was all that I knew it would be. I expected English writing assignments that would include using blogging techniques and other prominent technological methods that are useful in today’s world. The thing I dreaded the most was research papers and citations. I learned a lot about it this semester, but it is apparent that research papers are my biggest challenge. My favorite compositions to write were the reflective writings. I am most comfortable with the relaxed structure and the subject--me. The reflective writings were easy and interesting and had a lot of room for creativity.
All of my essays required revision at some point. I honestly do not believe that it would be possible to receive a good grade on a paper if some revision did not take place. In some cases, I would start to revise and I would end up completely changing my paper. Peer review was also very helpful in my revisions. After endlessly reviewing my own essays, peer review helped me find grammatical and writing style mistakes that I would have never notice.
Writing the research essay was made easier by the wiki research, but by the time I began to write my research paper I was sick of my topic. This was my third paper that I would write about Media’s Effect on Body Image, and I felt that there was nothing else I could say. I felt as if I had repeated myself over and over. In the end, I basically combined my two previous papers which resulted in a slightly unorganized research paper. Posting wikis was surprisingly not hard. It was easy to navigate through the site to post them. The wikis also helped throughout the whole course. I could use them for information and citations in various projects and they were all located together.
I feel that the magazine project was a good idea, but it had a few technical problems. Our group used Microsoft Publisher so we had a hard time actually getting the project uploaded and it was time consuming to send changes and pages to everyone. I feel that it was best that we completed this assignment during class because it would have been a nightmare trying to organize this project without direct communication. I feel that the portfolio project was also a good idea and it is a nice way to display our achievements for the semester. The portfolio shows our accomplishments and allows us to show what assignments we believe we did best on.
I feel that my web presence has been greatly bettered. I am now more confident about publishing my thoughts and words on the web and my writing style has been bettered, too. I feel that this class has bettered my writing style and, therefore, made it more professional. This has made me more confident in presenting myself to an employer in the future.
I believe that I did very well in my English 1102 hybrid class. I responsibly made all deadlines, turned in all final assignments and did an excellent job on all of them. I believe that I deserve an A for this class because of my hard work, effort and my accomplishments.
