Looking Back on the Blog Assignment

Today marks the final day for this reflective blog assignment and, as such, this will be the last entry in this diary. Over the past nine weeks, I have written about various topics, ranging from the software and tools I was using to complete other projects, to my thoughts on articles and reports read as research and my general thoughts on the MA programme content. Now that this exercise is concluding, I believe this last entry should reflect on what I have learned and gained from completing it.

I have never been overly comfortable with journaling my thoughts. I did not keep a diary as a child or teenager, nor do I tend to spend much time reflecting on my academic performance and learning. I tend to finish assigned work and immediately move on to the next task. Consequently, I initially found this blog to be somewhat of a challenge. I had difficulty determining subjects for entries, and it was a struggle to force myself to seriously consider my feelings about my progress through the course material. As the weeks progressed, this process became more natural as I gained experience. I chose to write one entry each Monday, and a second on Friday. I found that this approach was an effective way of keeping myself motivated and consistent. I think it also helped me to ensure the topics remained varied, as the Monday post could, in general, focus on lecture material and the Friday writing could deal with more practical concerns.

An interesting aspect of this task was that there was no prescribed word count to which we needed to adhere. I feel that this was a positive decision. It allowed me the flexibility to have some longer entries when appropriate, while simultaneously ensuring I did not need to pad the material with meaningless points to meet a minimum length. In practice, I set a personal target of 500 words as a guide, but this was primarily a theoretical target, and some entries may not have extended to this number of words.

Writing reflections has likely improved my writing style and technique. I was much more a technical-minded writer at the outset of this project. This characteristic is likely as a result of my background in computer science. Learning to express my thoughts on my performance and describing what I was learning was a new experience, but one which I feel has been of great benefit in terms of adding another element to my writing “toolkit”.

I found the experience of producing these reflections to be thoroughly rewarding. As outlined earlier, this is not something I have done previously. Taking time each week to consider my work, analysing difficulties I was having and how I was working through them, considering the prescribed reading materials for modules on a deeper level – all of this has been both an enjoyable and useful undertaking.

So much so, that although this project is ending, I have decided I will continue writing weekly entries in a private blog relating to the rest of the MA and during my summer development project. I believe this will be particularly helpful when it comes time to write my final report for the summer project. Also, I feel it will be of personal benefit in continuing to make me take regular time for introspective thought on my work. I hope that doing so will help me identify weaknesses and means of overcoming them.

The Various Assignments of the MA Programme

As the semester and the taught component of the MA programme nears an end, now seems an ideal opportunity to look back on the experience of the different assignments which I have completed since beginning the course in September. In this penultimate reflective blog post, I will discuss what I believe I have learned about myself from completing these tasks.

The projects and activities on this course have been like nothing else I have experienced in my third-level education. My undergraduate degree (a BSc. In Computer Games Development) involved practically zero academic research. Instead, our work was almost exclusively practical, problem-based learning. Transitioning to the MA where a significant aspect of many assignments was to conduct research and provide supporting references to existing literature was, initially, a challenge. The new expectations required a change in how I approached work. I feel I have significantly developed my skills as a researcher because of this. As time has progressed, I have become more confident in my abilities to source relevant readings. I have improved my techniques for searching the various databases that we have access to through the UL library. These skills will be useful in my future career, as it is likely that it will be necessary for me to carry out background investigations on topics I will work on for clients.

Ask pretty much any student of this Masters degree what the course is like, and words like “hectic”, “intense” or “busy” will be sure to follow. Tasks come quick and fast throughout, and you are always managing several projects at once, often with deadlines that are close to each other. As a result, it becomes imperative to be skilled in effective time management. To keep up with the workload, I found it useful to create a weekly to-do list, outlining each of the tasks I needed to accomplish. This method was very successful and is something I wish I had applied much earlier in my education. Having a clear set of goals was crucial in ensuring I did not get overwhelmed by the scale of work ahead. Breaking each activity into smaller steps made them appear less daunting. It prevented what I like to term my “rabbit-in-the-headlights” tendency, which was a feature of my undergraduate studies. That is, I would often find myself unable to see a way of even starting projects, resulting in a build-up of pressure until eventually I would be forced to rush through work in order to meet submission deadlines. I think time management may be one of the critical skills I have developed during the programme.

Assessing the various types of assignment I worked on throughout the year, one thing has become evident to me. I am a more practical-minded person. The projects I have enjoyed the most were those which involved creating a deliverable. These included redesigning an instruction manual, writing a descriptive and informative summary of a long-form article, developing an instructional podcast and creating a storyboard for a digital learning resource, among others. I found it to be thoroughly rewarding to put into practice the concepts which we were learning in our lectures. Conversely, I found more theoretical work to be much more of a challenge. While I value the skills I developed in the research those activities required, they remained outside of my comfort zone throughout. This lesson about myself was instrumental in helping me to decide whether to pursue the development or dissertation route for the MA project. Learning this has also helped me to focus on where I would like my career to progress once the course is over.

The MA in Technical Communication and E-Learning presents its’ students with a wide variety of assignment types. From designing graphics to learning new pieces of software like MadCap Flare, and to carrying out research studies, the content is varied and develops a range of skills. Ultimately, I feel this is a major positive of the programme, and it has allowed me to improve my abilities and learn about my interests and aptitudes alongside each other.

Reflecting on the Completed Interview Assignment and Using PowerPoint for Voiceover

At the beginning of March, I interviewed a professional working in the Higher Education sector as part of the TW5212 module. Based on that interview, I was required to produce both a presentation and a written report of my findings. Having submitted both parts of the assignment this week, I feel now is an appropriate time to reflect on what I learned during the process.

When the interview was complete, I had a decision to make as to whether I would work on the presentation or the report first. I approached this dilemma with the mindset that the slideshow was going to be a summation of the report. As such, I decided the best route was to focus on the write-up. I believe this was the right choice. When I finished the report, I found it a relatively straight-forward process to adapt the material for a presentation. Going forward, this is the approach I will take if I need to produce presentations based on my research.

The main takeaway from this assignment for me was the skill of adapting content to a different medium. At first, I was concerned that my presentation was merely repeating the work in my report. It took some time before I realised that this was not necessarily a bad thing. A slideshow is a much different delivery method than a long-form written report. Learning to condense my findings into an easily digestible seven-minute presentation will doubtless be a useful technique of which to have experience.

Another important aspect of this project was gaining experience in recording a voiceover in Microsoft’s PowerPoint software. Before this work, I had only ever recorded narration using Audacity. However, we were required to synchronise our audio with the presentation, so it was necessary to use PowerPoint’s built-in features. At first, I found this to be a difficult task. I found the interface to be somewhat unintuitive. Initially, I didn’t realise that it was possible to record narration for each slide individually. I made several attempts to record the entire presentation at once, which resulted in mistakes and an overall low-quality result. When I figured out that the program would seamlessly knit individual clips together, the process became more manageable.

I still feel there are significant limitations to the tool’s set of features for this purpose. The inability to edit the recordings for a slide often results in the need to re-record an entire segment if you make an error or need to remove silence. This problem can be frustrating, especially to someone accustomed to having access to a broader range of tools. Further, the estimated total length of the final output video can be inconsistent if you include slide transitions in your presentation. The time these transitions take is not included in the figure the software presents you with before you export the video. Only after the video has been generated can you determine the correct length. This limitation is not ideal if you have a strict time limit to which to adhere.

However, these problems aside, I believe completing this work was beneficial in terms of developing my skillset. While recording a voiceover in PowerPoint would not be my preferred option in the future, it is reassuring to know that if I need to produce a video presentation, I now know the technique required. I also feel that this assignment has made me more confident in my ability to adapt information to various formats, something which is a vital aspect of technical communication today.