The process I took to choose my literate activity to research involved considering my hobbies and how they involved multiple literacies. My first thought was my passion for coding, though this proved to be too general and I narrowed it down to web development. I had experience in this area and I was convinced that I could further the field through my research. The research I decided to conduct was how multiple literacies could be used to improve website development. My current studies into multiliteracies opened my eyes to new possibilities when it comes to designing a website.

My line of research comes with multiple terms and concepts that must be explained. An example of this is the use of multiliteracies, which can be confusing to someone that is not accustomed to writing studies. The way I circumvented this was by linking an article that explained the subject matter well and also included my own explanation of the term in my research proposal. I expected my audience to be interested in website development and also somewhat familiar with basic writing concepts. Because of this I chose to explain most of the abstract terms in an effort to make my research proposal more readable.

Through the iterative process of drafting, I got feedback on how to improve my research proposal. From peer review, I got advice to add a conclusion and fix some minor grammatical errors. This helped me in closing the research proposal and also allowed me to improve the quality of my writing. After revising my research proposal from peer review, Professor Vazquez advised me to fix my “Method” heading to the more appropriate “Research Proposal” heading. She also brought up the errors in my work cited page. Surprisingly, all feedback I received instructed to perform local revisions. I also did not see any need to perform global changes to my research proposal.

Overall, this research proposal was easy to write about because it involved my passion for coding. My participation in website development gives me the ability to spread first hand experience on it. The most difficult challenge was finding the right research question that would not only incorporate what I love about website development but also incorporate the concept of multiliteracies. I feel that I was able to successfully merge the two into a useful and engaging research question. Through these difficulties I learned how connected different areas of thought can be. I learned to organize my writing better with headings and paragraph breaks that make sense. I also acquired the ability to cater to my audience and their knowledge. This is especially useful in widening the barrier to entry for this type of discussion. In the end, this research proposal was a process that I learned from and hopefully others can learn from as well.

During the inception of my primary research, I chose to focus on data collection that be beneficial to the research I was pursuing. I figured that an interview would be useful in expressing the thoughts of the user which can reflect on multiple types of literacy involved in website development. For secondary research, I decided to pick resources that had a close relationship to the research I was doing. This proved to be too difficult and as a result I went with a more broad area of digital projects. These secondary resources still do a good job at supporting my claims that digital projects such as web development, have literacy requirements. The way I found secondary research was greatly influenced by the library session I partook in. This library session gave me great resources through the ucf library to find scholarly articles on my area of research. I used google scholar along with the ucf library to find all my secondary resources.

There were multiple course concepts that I needed to be familiar with in order complete this annotated bibliography. I had to be able to synthesize the information in my secondary resources to my current research in order to make a useful annotated bibliography. Even though I had no prior experience writing an annotated bibliography, my goal was to follow the structure and purpose of an annotated bibliography as best as I could. I think an annotated bibliography is important for the reader who wants to look beyond my research. This resource gives the reader an opportunity to see a quick summary of each secondary resource and also why it is important to my research. For peer review, I did not have a complete primary research section as well as some incomplete secondary research annotations. I made sure to enhance my annotations and also add a primary research section. After that revision, my annotated bibliography did not need any further revisions.

This assignment was a welcome challenge. I think the structure of an annotated bibliography helps me write it as it gives me an outline of what to write. Even with this structure, I had challenges with creating the annotations since they had to be quick summaries while also explaining why they were important to my research. I overcame them by brute force because I did not have much choice. I learned a lot about citations and how annotated bibliographies are important to any research paper. The intricacies of website development also became clearer when looking for secondary research as they provided a differing perspective on my research. My weakness of synthesis also became apparent as I struggled to make the annotations of each source. 

I completed this assignment by considering my secondary sources and understanding the ways that they overlap. My goal was to see the commonalities of the research and connect them to my research. The way I did this was by focusing on the main points of my secondary sources. No changes were made to my research question or thesis statement. Some key concepts were essential to complete this task. I had to be able to synthesize sources and cite them in the text. This proved to be a challenge but in the end I learned these key concepts successfully.

I expected my audience to be mostly website developers interested in writing studies. Although this was my target group, I chose to keep my barrier to entry as low as possible so that anyone could learn more about website development. The only prior knowledge needed is a background in writing studies.

I received a multitude of feedback for this task. My peer reviewers told me to add more sources and synthesize more. Interestingly, Professor Vazquez also gave me this advice. It was clear that I had to synthesize my secondary sources and add more detail in connecting them. I used this device effectively to create this final draft complete with in text citations and adequate synthesis of my sources. I feel satisfied with my work and do not wish to do more revisions.

This assignment was neither hard nor easy. I encountered difficulties with using in text citations and making enough synthesis of my secondary sources. My final result shows that I was successful in taking these challenges and overcoming them. I learned quite a bit from doing this literature review such as in text citations and effective synthesis. My knowledge on website development also grew as I had to think of my sources more critically in order to synthesize them correctly. I learned that I need to work on my synthesis skills as they are not up to par with my expectations.

My process for writing this paper was a combination of multiple sections that I wrote over a period of time. These sections were done as separate tasks with the purpose of creating this final research paper. The use of class time in order to complete this assignment was very helpful in limiting the pain involved in creating a research paper from scratch. I did not have to modify any of the sections because they served their purpose well. In writing this research paper, I used the idea of multiliteracies like all the previous tasks. I decided to follow the structure of results then discussions. My research question did not change.

This research was easy to complete because it focused on a topic that I was passionate about and in the end I learned valuable lessons. I had some trouble with the discussions section because I did not want to do a disservice to the reader with a discussion that had no purpose. I feel I was able to overcome this but I would have to run trials in order to find out. I got feedback on my research paper from peers which told me to discuss more and remove any unnecessary information or pictures. Unfortunately, I did not get any feedback from Professor Vasquez but I think my final product is up to par nonetheless.

I got to learn about myself as well as website development as a whole. I was able to dig into the real reason why website development uses multiliteracies. In researching this topic, I was also able to discover my tendencies as a website developer and how I could improve my craft. Writing research papers hasn’t exactly been my specialty but now that I have written this one, I am more confident to complete research and write a research paper successfully. I also rediscovered my talent of writing in high pressure, time constrained situations.

Our process for making the presentation was to give each person in our group a slide to talk about their research. I used my knowledge of the rhetorical situation to grab the audience’s attention and keep it. The way I structured my slide was by making it light and hopefully funny in order to make the experience more enjoyable for everyone. We decided to use a powerpoint because it was able to show the main points of our research and gave the audience something to look at. As a group, we stood up next the the projector screen in order to emphasize the powerpoint. We also used animations to stress the importance of certain points.

I was able to complete all the course objectives by doing this research project. I managed to synthesize and analyze complex texts, engage in a recursive, inquiry-based writing, interpret my research findings in order to produce arguments that matter to the website development community, and examine my own conceptions of writing and research. The most important pieces of my research have to be the discovery of the differences in how website developers and software developers are aware of their audience. I also enjoyed learning the different ways that website developers have to adapt to the user and their expectations for how a website works.

We did not get any feedback for our presentation. I wish I could have added more animations to my presentation, but alas I must live with my presentation as it was. I did learn though that the way you present your presentation can dramatically impact your success of introducing your ideas. With making presentations, I learned to make the audience interested in my research and use that to drive the presentation.