Discuss how you worked toward some or all of the course’s learning objectives, indicating what coursework was involved (reading, assigned videos, discussion, class activities, assignments, or other). Close by pointing out how this coursework will build toward work you anticipate in your academic/professional career.
The textbook for this course, “Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators”, really laid the groundwork for understanding and identifying basic design principles. It thoroughly explains how to evaluate the effectiveness of a document’s overall design for a particular rhetorical situation and how to create documents that serve both the needs of a client and a user. It was a valuable resource when completing my assignments because I could cross reference if my designs were meeting all the necessary criteria.
I also found the assignments themselves to be excellent modes of learning how to comfortably design and produce a variety of document types. I especially appreciated that the course had us practice writing manuals that would serve a broad audience and allowed us to collaborate with a real client. I find that hands-on experience is the best way I learn how to research design, usability, and visual communication.
Considering that I want to be a copy editor someday, I believe all of the concepts I’ve learned in this class will be applied to my professional career. The coursework is, in theory, exactly the same as my future job description. This course has prepared me to not only be able to critically evaluate document design, but also create good document design if my job position calls for it. It has also prepared me to work with more diverse office software, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, so that I can easily adapt to the workplace systems of any company. Lastly, I know that I will most definitely be using the LinkedIn Learning and editing/proofreading shorthand resources as a reference for my future work as an editor and document designer because it will take many years before all of that information is transformed into memory.
