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COMP 491/492

Dickinson College Computer Science Senior Seminar

WA03 - Blog Post Revisions

In this assignment you will review and reflect on the peer feedback that you received from your classmates in WA02 and use it to guide a revision of your blog post from WA01. Once you have revised your post you will post it on a public-facing blog. Posting your writing publicly should encourage careful thought, precise writing, and a pride in your work. It can also provide evidence of your knowledge and abilities to prospective employers and/or graduate programs.

Assignment

The following links to later sections of this document provide the details of this assignment:

  1. Review the Peer Feedback on your Post.
  2. Revise Your Post.
  3. Reflect on Your Revisions.
  4. Create a Public-Facing Blog and Post and Post your Writing.
  5. Add Final Draft and Reflections to your WiD Repository.

Additional Details

Review the Peer Feedback on your Post

In the COMP491 folder in your WiD portfolio on GitHub you will now find a Feedback folder containing two additional documents. These will be named something similar to XX-Title-PeerReview-01.pdf and XX-Title-PeerReview-02.pdf.pdf, where XX is the arbitrary number that was assigned to your draft during the double-anonymous review process. These files contain the peer feedback comments from the classmates who reviewed your draft.

You should begin by carefully reading and considering these reviews with an open mind. Think about how the contents of the reviews can help you to improve your post, clarify your writing, and better communicate with the readers. You are not expected to incorporate every bit of feedback, take every suggestion or respond to every criticism. You are however expected to engage deeply and fairly with each point made by the reviewer. Maybe that means incorporating suggestions, reorganizing your post, refocusing your post, or revising to make your points more clearly. It will also mean disregarding some suggestions and criticisms as well. But I urge you to resist the temptation to become defensive or dismissive of the reviews. Authors will often discount suggestions and critical comments with thoughts like “the reviewer just didn’t get it” or “they missed the point.” I encourage you to avoid this trap and instead approach the feedback with a generous mindset. Accept that the feedback was provided with the best of intentions of helping you improve your work. Respond to thoughts of “they didn’t get it” by recognizing that their feedback gives you clues to why they didn’t get it, and thus insights into how to revise so that they do get it. This work isn’t easy, but it is well worth it.

Revise Your Post

After carefully considering the feedback you have received, and reviewing the criteria in the Writing the Blog Post section of WA01, revise your draft.

Save your final draft into a file named TITLE-final.pdf, where you replace TITLE with a few key words from your title. Place this file in the COMP491 folder in your WiD portfolio on GitHub.

Reflect on Your Revisions

Write a short (1/2 to 1 page) reflection on the revisions that you have made to your draft. This reflection should thoughtfully address:

Save your reflection into a file named TITLE-reflection.pdf, where you replace TITLE with a few key words from your title. Place this file in the COMP491 folder in your WiD portfolio on GitHub.

Create a Public-Facing Blog and Post your Writing

  1. Create an account on a blog site. If you have a favorite blog site, you are welcome to use it (just create a new blog for the course). If you do not, then some sites that provide free blog hosting are:

    Note that if you prefer, you may use a pseudonym for your blog username so that you are not personally identifiable on your blog. You will later be asked to post a link to your blog in your WiD Repository for grading purposes.

  2. Give your blog a meaningful, descriptive title. Remember this is a public-facing blog, so you should choose a title that will have broader appeal beyond our course.
  3. Make an initial post to your blog that includes a statement that introduces you and your blog. Remember this is a public-facing blog, so you should write this in a way that has broader appeal beyond our course.
  4. Make a second post containing the final draft of your writing for this assignment. You will need to put the content of your post into the blog and ensure that all of your links work correctly. Do not simply place your PDF into the blog.

Add Final Draft and Reflections to your WiD Repository

Submit your assignment as follows:

  1. Ensure that your Dickinson WiD Repository on GitHub is well organized.
    • There should be one folder for each course (e.g. COMP132, COMP256, etc…)
    • All content should be stored in the folder for the appropriate course.
  2. Ensure that your TITLE-final.pdf and TITLE-reflection.pdf are in the COMP491 folder in your WiD repository on GitHub.
  3. Add a README.md file to your COMP491 folder in your WiD repository on GitHub.
  4. Place a clickable link to your public-facing blog in the README.md file.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License All textual materials used in this course are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

GPL V3 or Later All executable code used in this course is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 3 or later