Module 4 & 5

Module 4 is about the planning, writing, and revising of your document.  Planning is analyzing the problem, and gathering the information needed.  Writing is just putting that planning into words onto your paper or screen.  Revising is editing your work, having others look over it to give feedback, changing parts of the document to make it more efficient or adding or deleting parts.  Planning consists of brainstorming, freewriting, or clustering, which are all great ways to get your brain thinking to help come up with creative ideas.  Getting feedback from others is a great way to improve your work through revision, it  brings another perspective into the work that can help a document be more efficient.

Module 5 is about the design of documents.  This module explains how important it is to have well thought out and presented documents and gives examples of ways to do it such as the use of white space, headings, mix of paragraph lengths, etc.  Headings are important because they divide your letter into sections, and make it easy for the reader to navigate.  The module also discusses the different types of fonts that are available, and stresses that no more than two separate types of fonts should be used in the same document.  When preparing power point slides, you should use larger font, 44 or 50-point font instead of 11 or 12 such as in a regular business document.  On power points, you should also use bullet-point phrases instead of long sentences, and also only use clip art in a presentation if it is totally necessary and relevant.  This module also discusses Web page design, in a Web page, the opening screen is crucial, it must open quickly and be easy to navigate.

One thing that I found very interesting was in Module 5 on Web design.  I have found that the text book is correct, that usually if a Web page does not load within the first 15 seconds most people, including myself, will become frustrated and leave the site.  I also find that if a website is difficult to navigate then it will not become as popular and people will tend to shy away from it.  I experienced this a little when I attended Jefferson Community College.  I always thought that it was too difficult to navigate around their main web site and it became such a chore to ever get on there to find something about the schedule or even to find classes for the upcoming semester.

Another thing that I found to be very interesting were the ways to improve feedback.  You should tell the person that is reviewing your paper specific areas that you want comments on for parts of the document you are not so sure about.  Having someone help you revising it will also help to catch mistakes that the writer does not notice because they have read it as they understand it, which may not make sense to other people.