Victoria Albers
Victoria Albers is a student at North Dakota State University. Her Bachelor’s degree is in Natural Resources Management. She is a seasonal biological science technician at Knife River Indian Villages. She is aiming toward graduation in the spring of 2012 and plans on pursuing a career in the National Park Service.
Introduction to my portfolio
Writing in the Sciences, English 324, is an upper level English class offered at NDSU. This section is an online course in which the class communicated via Blackboard, Facebook, and email. This method has helped me learn how to communicate effectively in a variety of contexts and genres. My communication skills have broadened because I had to rely on technology to problem solve and correspond with others. This is going to be helpful in my future with an always increasing and prevalent use of technology. Throughout the semester I collected data and performed research and was able to integrate my knowledge and ideas in a coherent and meaningful manner. I learned about a wide variety of scientific genres and how/when they are used in real life situations. I researched several types of genres including research papers, literatures reviews, and research studies just to name a few. I correctly used APA formatting for citing and referencing my sources. Also, I integrated genre in my writing projects and used a variety of styles such as a proposal, article review, annotated bibliography, progress report, reading responses, and a final research project. I adapted the content of my work to consider who my audience would be. In my portfolio it is shown how I managed my writing and research in a clear, correct, and sophisticated manner to achieve the best results for the completion of our website.
Most of the semester was dedicated to our research project. I was a part of a group consisting of two other classmates, Ashley Abernathey and Marti Hoekstra. Our group is investigating the differences between organic and conventional farming and its relationship to antibiotic resistance. We performed literature reviews and interviews with professionals to get information to contribute to the website. The whole class’s main goal of the website is to provide information on antibiotic resistance to the general public to broaden their understanding of the topic. The portfolio is a breakdown of the work we did relating to our research.
In the beginning of the semester we read “The Antibiotic Paradox” by Stuart Levy and completed reading responses. This helped me learn how to analyze and interpret authors’ work and portray my perspective to others. The first step of our project was writing a proposal. This lays out our group’s plan and goals for our major project and how we would be contributing to the class website on antibiotic resistance. It provides the reader with an idea of what our topic is about and describes are processes we will be using including things such as literature reviews and interviews. It also includes a timeline of when our projects are to be completed. Next we each wrote an article review during our research phase to analyze a research article relating to antibiotic resistance in agriculture. This gave me good experience on how to find credible sources, interpret the information by pulling out main points, and evaluating the conclusion of the article. We then expanded our research by completing an Annotated Bibliography. With this we each found and summarized ten sources citing them in APA. During the middle of our research process we wrote a progress report. This showed us what we needed to complete yet at that point and provided the class with information on how far we were in our project. Finally after we compiled enough information, we developed our final project paper. We were able to show what we learned about research by comparing and contrasting our results from our interviews with the literature we reviewed.
Each member of our group put in their own contribution for our major project to make sure that we got tasks done on time and in an efficient manner. I was responsible for arranging the interview with Marc Bauer and to communicate with him throughout the process. I also participated throughout the research and writing process. I found sources for our project and helped write the individual group projects. Overall, my biggest contribution was arranging group meetings and ensuring we had adequate communication.
Following is my portfolio which displays my integration and understanding of the course objectives for English 324.
Documents in my portfolio
Proposal: A proposal was completed in an IMRAD format discussing background information and how we will contribute through our research to broaden what is already known. It sets out a plan of action and describes how we will be contributing to the class’s website.
Article review: An article review analyzes a research article based on antibiotic resistance and agriculture. It allowed me to get experience finding sources and interpreting the information in my own words. The review was a beginning step in our research process to give us an idea of the type of sources we need to find.
Annotated bibliography: An annotated bibliography provides a list of sources and summaries for each which we used to contribute to our final project. We included ten relevant sources based on antibiotic use in agriculture and gave a brief description of each to refer to throughout the rest of the semester. Each was cited in APA format.
Progress report: A progress report gave the class an idea of where are group was in the process of completing our project. It includes specific details on what we completed and the steps that need to be done yet before our work can be published on the website.
Reading response 1: Reading responses were completed throughout the semester. They analyze each chapter and give me chance to state my perspective on what I read. The reading responses helped me think in an analytical and critical way which helped me brainstorm ideas for the final project.
Final project: A final project is a compilation of the work we have completed. It includes the background information we received through our literature reviews and compares it with the results we received from our interview that we performed. It pulls all of our research together in an analytical manner.