ENG 314: Technical Communication

Outcomes:

Wrote an introductory paper on recursion.
Worked with a team to help students understand recursion.
Learned different ways of teaching and implementing recursion.

Description Of Project:

As a Software Engineer, you are introduced to recursion in your first 200 level programming class. In order to be successful, you need a deep understanding of recursion and implementation. This document goes indepth into recursion; explaining what it does and how to implement it. Our goal was to design an introductory document on recursion that professors at Iowa State University could use to supplement their teaching on recursion.

Learning Outcomes:

In designing a document with the intent of teaching incoming students at Iowa State University I acquired a deeper understanding of recursion. To teach recursion, I personally needed a deep understanding of recursion, and the different types of recursion. I then also needed to think about, what students would need in learning recursion when they may not have a deep background of coding. This document also taught us how to write a technical document and communicate to my peers in a professional format.

What I liked most:

One of my favorite parts of this project, and course was that it focused on technical aspects of my own major. From my internship experience at Workiva I have learned that technical writing is a very important aspect of real world programming jobs. This project taught me to how to express my ideas and technical abilities into a document that others could learn from. I was also able to take this document and give it to my students in the Peer Mentor program. I walked through the document with them and learned areas that the document could improve on to help the students have a better understanding, and learn the areas that my team made assumptions a freshman may know that maybe the did not know, and expand on those areas.

Paper