Unit 3 Reflection

Unit 3 Reflection

    For my unit 3 portfolio, I chose to make a Google slideshow on the various technological resources that we have on campus at Syracuse University. I took inspiration from the video that we watched in class where the students walked around campus pointing out various buildings and libraries. I chose google slides though, because I wanted to create something that students and professors, my audience, could really use. I wanted to highlight the writing and technology resources that we have on campus to argue some of the claims I made in my own unit 2 project. For example, I state, "On the flip side, technology has done a lot of damage to society and the general health of people in several ways" (Unit 2 Portfolio). While this, and the many other things that I stated about technology being potentially negative are still true in a lot of ways, I wanted to highlight the positive resources that we have at SU at students' fingertips that they might not be aware of. I explain in the slides that the slideshow doesn't contain every bit of information about these resources, but it contains the general and important information that students might often have questions about. I also include images to show what the buildings look like, and a map, address, and hours to show where they are located on campus and when to visit. I also included links when necessary for where to go to sign up for appointments if necessary or if the viewer wants more information via the SU website. I thought that a slideshow would be the most useful mode of displaying this information because it isn't overwhelming, and if saved to a student's or professor's google drive or computer desktop, it takes only a click to find out the information they need quickly instead of scrolling through a 10-minute video or scouring the extensive SU website. 

    I submitted this slideshow to a small audience primarily to get feedback to see if they agreed that this was a useful tool that students might actually use. I submitted it to a population of about 10 students with different majors, backgrounds, socioeconomic statuses, genders, grade levels, and learning styles to get well-rounded feedback. I sent an email to their @syr.edu emails with a paragraph explaining the assignment, what my project was, what I wanted it to accomplish, and I asked for their feedback by responding in the email chain with their thoughts. I was pleased when the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, and I received responses like, "Lauren, I really like what you chose to do for your assignment, I love that the slides contain general but helpful information about the resources we have on campus. I actually learned a few things, and I will save it to my desktop to use in the future. Great work!" (Ava Crocitto '26). I received several responses similar to this, and a few with constructive criticism that mostly ended up being about aesthetics. I was very pleased with the responses, and I hope that they were truthful in saying that they think it would be useful for all SU students and staff. 

   I received a lot of helpful feedback from my classmates throughout the three units. In Unit 1, all of the comments were positive and didn't provide many recommendations to improve my work. In Unit 2 though, I struggled more with the assignment, so I was glad to receive a lot of helpful comments. The comments below were some that I received and utilized to improve my final Unit 2 Project from my Unit 2 Draft. 

"Good start, your draft so far looks very interesting and it is an engaging topic. I would recommend adding a call to action that is suggested in the rubric once you connect your quotes to your conversation" (Benjamin, Unit 2 Draft).

"Make sure you add a variety of different sources to fit the rubric criteria. Also make sure that the posts are tagged as Unit 2" (Heidi Currin, Unit 2 Draft). 

    I found these quotes helpful because, in the assignment sheet, there are a lot of requirements, so these comments helped to remind me of what I was missing in my draft and to include in my final assignment. In my final portfolio, you can see below in the highlighted part and the citations at the bottom, that I used a variety of sources, and I also included a call to action like the comments suggested. I appreciated the comments from my classmates because I think they helped me to make my final portfolio well-rounded and argumentative. 

    As for overall changes to my blog, I made some small changes, but overall I didn't change much content-wise. I first checked the calendar to make sure that everything was titled properly, in the correct order, and that I had the proper requirements for my blog and assignments, like anonymous commenting, an archive feature, etc. I also read over all of my assignments to make sure that everything was still following rubrics and guidelines, and ended up making a few, small tweaks. I kept in mind that my audience is college students, so I edited the phrasing of sentences and used different vocabulary on several occasions, but I made sure to keep my thoughts concise and digestible since this is a blog. I did also make an aesthetic change to my blog, I changed the theme of my blog, and I think it looks nicer. I added a background to make my blog more interesting to viewers than the plain white that I had before. Overall, I didn't feel like I had to make many changes to my blog content, but I wanted to put in the effort to make my blog more interesting. I played around with colors and themes, and I landed on the current version shown below, which I think makes it more appealing to viewers.