Final Blog (COMM 333)

In my final blog for Comm 333 I will be discussing my experiences this semester. I will talk about my favorite and most challenging task that came with some ePortfolio assignments. I will also give as much advice as I can to future students and talk about the most important part of this course PERSUASION. Comm 333 has made this semester very interesting. I didn’t expect for this class to be so in depth on the critical analyzation of persuasion. Comm 333 has helped me in a couple different ways; one being able to work on my critical thinking and the other was having a professional presence online with an ePortfolio.

I had already finished my ePortfolio with a class from a previous semester, but this class really helped me go in depth with it. I was able to focus more time on the important parts of my ePortfolio, which were presentation and professionalism. Last semester I spent so much time on creating the ePortfolio I ended up losing focus on the main objectives. What I like most about my ePortfolio this semester is how I was able to combine a little of my personal self with my professional self. I believe being professional is always important, but I also think you should bring some of your own personality into it as well. Showing a company that you have a personality can help you when it comes time for the hiring process of a job that you are interested in. However, showing too much could hurt. You have to figure out how to balance the two together.

When it comes to my favorite piece of my ePortfolio I would have to say the video blog stands out the most. This was a challenging project not because it was a video blog, but because I had a hard time figuring out exactly what I wanted to talk about. Once I figured that out it was smooth sailing. The reason I choose this as my favorite piece is because you got to choose what subject you wanted to talk about. Being able to pick what you want to talk about makes the project more enjoyable and interesting to do.

The most challenging aspect about my ePortfolio this semester was revamping what I already had. Sometimes it is easier to start from nothing then redoing something you already have. I found myself staring at my WIX page thinking and thinking of what needed to be done in order to make it better. I changed the colors and font, added a picture, and fixed some grammatical errors and thought I was done. However, after a few critiques from students I changed it up even more by adding to my resume page and making it look a little more professional. My attitude was “if it’s not broke why fix it?” However, I learned that it may not be broke, but could use a little polishing. My advice for future students, especially communication majors, is that you may think everything looks good, but there is always room for improvement especially since you will be doing ePortfolio’s for multiple courses.

As we all know this course wasn’t just about an ePortfolio it was also about…..wait for it….. PERSUASION! The most interesting component I learned from persuasion is fear appeals. I discuss fear appeals in my last discussion post and talk about the different ways fear is used to persuade a person into doing something that they may not want to do. It’s amazing what a person will do when you bring fear into their lives. Fear appeal was an interesting component of persuasion because I’ve never really thought about fear being used as a persuasive measurement the way our textbook describes.

My views of persuasion have changed slightly. The reasons my views have changed are because I didn’t realize so much though went into one particular word. I mean there is an entire course on persuasion. It’s amazing how many different studies, theories, and models there are for persuasion. In all great class and I’m glad it’s almost over not because I didn’t like the course, but because it’s one step closer to graduation.