English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This past week was spent cleaning up our rough draft and tying loose ends together. The week started with an online chat Monday evening where the group discussed exactly how we were going to progress through the week and make sure we had our final draft completely finished by Friday morning. I offered to lend my hand to the editing process, as well as take responsibility for an overall conclusion section as well a comparative advantages/ disadvantages matrix to briefly summarize the key points presented in our white paper.

This wee

This past week was very productive, both in terms of group progress and my individual progress. At the end of last week, our group was challenged with focusing the definition of our target audience to something more specific. Through some research and discussion, we decided the target audience of our white paper would be the American Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu.

http://www.heritage.org/research/features/nationalsecurity/bg1926.cfm

http://www.smartgridnews.com/artman/publish/article_289.html

Last week, there was much discussion about the audience whom we were focusing our white paper to. We went from the general category of political leaders, to lawmakers and policy makers, to American energy policy makers, and finally cabinet members of the US Department of Energy. We decided this week to focus the paper to Steven Chu, who is the US Secretary of Energy. Secondary readers will likely be his cabinet members. Having a specific person in mind when drafting our white paper will help us imagine how specifically he will use the white paper.

This week’s readings addressed the topic of ethics, and how ethical considerations are made in the professional and organizational environments. Technical Communications Today defines ethics as system of moral, social, or cultural values that govern the conduct of an individual or community. Plainly stated, being ethical means doing the right thing at the right time. This is easier said than done, especially in the context of the workplace. It is not always clear how to behave ethically, especially when faced with making a critical decision that may lead to non-ideal outcomes.

Our white paper project seemed to really take shape and get off the ground during this past week. Last week, we deciding upon a topic and established a general definition of our audience. We chose solutions to America’s oil dependence, focusing on sustainable energy sources and smart grid technologies. Initially, our audience was defined as “American political leaders”. The instructor feedback from our initial proposal suggested that this was vague and too broad for the sake of this project.

After getting through this week’s assigned readings, I have a little bit of a clearer insight of what it takes to affectively research, and how exactly I’ll apply research methods to our White Paper project. A key point that was made in the Thompson Handbook reading regarding researching is that you (the researcher) need to have some type of fundamental interest in the topic in question. Or, at the very least, understand the importance of the topic and see a reason for others to be more informed on the subject. Research takes time; in many cases it takes a lot of time.