Josiah Nelson
Josiah Nelson is a senior at North Dakota State University majoring in Zoology with an emphasis in Wildlife and Fisheries.
Introduction to my portfolio
The following portfolio contains some of my work completed for North Dakota State University’s English 324 Writing in the Sciences course. The main objective for this course was to teach students to communicate effectively using a variety of communication skills in a variety of contexts and genres. More specifically, students managed writing and research projects using the subject of antibiotic resistance as a primary topic. These projects were then compiled to be used as online media educational resources.
Tyler Burslie and I collaborated together on much of our work due to the fact that we independently proposed very similar projects. Together we conducted a survey to assess antibiotic resistance and misuse awareness. We then compiled and analyzed the results from this survey and worked together to produce a final research report as our major project contribution. The articles included in the portfolio are a research proposal, an article review, an annotated bibliography, a project progress report, reading responses to The Antibiotic Paradox by Stuart Levy, and a final research report which was done in collaboration with Tyler Burslie.
Documents in my portfolio
Proposal: The research proposal outlined the proposed methods of study consisting of a survey of public awareness of antibiotic resistance as well as set goals for the project. It also highlighted the importance of the project and the overall contribution the project would make to the English 324 class website.
Article review: The article review is a review I wrote of Stuart Levy’s paper “Antibiotic Resistance: Consequences of Inaction”. Writing this review helped to expand my understanding of writing in the sciences as well my understanding of antibiotic resistance. The article also contributed as a resource for the final project.
Annotated bibliography: The annotated bibliography provides ten resources I compiled that provide background information relevant to the topic of antibiotic resistance and misuse. By putting this together I learned to search for resources for writing in the sciences and to properly cite these works into a bibliography. I also learned much about antibiotics through these resources and used some of them for the final project.
Progress report: The progress report is an update on the work completed and work scheduled for the major project done by myself and Tyler Burslie. The report was done in a memo form and aided in my learning to write in different contexts.
Reading response 1: Reading response 1 is my response to a discussion of chapter five of The Antibiotic Paradox by Stuart Levy. This response included my thoughts about the social and cultural factors that I feel are contributing to the problem of antibiotic resistance.
Reading response 2: Reading response 2 is my response to a discussion of chapter six of The Antibiotic Paradox by Stuart Levy. This response discussed some of the little known facts we were learning about in our reading. My comment really shows how I wasn’t only learning about writing in the sciences, I was also learning about antibiotics.
Final project: The final research report is a summarization of the results of the survey in a scientific research article format compiled by Tyler Burslie and myself. It contains an introduction, methods, results, and discussion section. The work done for this project was great experience for any scientific writing I do in the future.