Professional and Communication Skills

In each course you take at PG, you are part of a learning community. All members are working to strengthen their professional and communication skills and achieve their academic and career goals. Group discussion allows for new perspectives and personal growth. Discussion Boards are an important part of your learning; they provide an opportunity to asynchronously interact with your classmates and instructor.

Using the required academic readings, and supplemental academic research, you will address the questions in the Discussion Board while adhering to the Discussion Board Rubric.

Topic 1: Prepare for Success on your Unit 9 Assignment

When you engage in a team project, whether for work or school, you want to provide support for your teammates, acknowledge their contributions by pointing out strengths in their work, and offer original, thoughtful feedback that will benefit the entire team. The ability to collaborate effectively is a crucial professional skill, and this week’s discussion will help you to build those skills.

Review the Unit 9 Assignment Instructions. Then, use the following downloadable Brainstorming Chart to help you generate ideas for your Unit 9 Assignment. 

INITIAL POST
Once you have brainstormed and decided on the one specific problem and solution you will write about, post a two to three paragraph rough draft of your Unit 9 Assignment so that your classmates and instructor can review your ideas and offer you suggestions for revision. Use these suggestions to strengthen your draft, make it more persuasive, and prepare it for the final stages of the writing process, (editing and proofreading), so it is ready for submission as your Unit 9 Assignment.

Brainstorming Chart

What organization do you imagine yourself working for in this assignment, and what is one specific problem you think needs attention in this organization?
Who is your audience and what information would motivate her to want to make a change in the organization?
What is the one specific recommendation/solution you are proposing and why do you think it will work?
What one source will help you show this recommendation is reasonable?
What information about the solution will you need to provide to motivate the audience to approve your idea?

Be sure to also assess your process on the Unit 9 Assignment at this point. Review the Unit 9 Assignment rubric and explain what you have done so far to meet/exceed requirements there and what you will need to do to meet/exceed ALL expectations outlined in the Unit 9 Assignment rubric.

Remember that your goal should be to post your initial discussion by Saturday so you have time to focus on other tasks. Remember to include a relevant open-ended question that helps your classmates help you with improving your main point and development of ideas. Also refer to and cite specific Unit reading concepts in your post to help show you are applying these concepts and to give you practice with using and citing sources. 

RESPONSES TO INITIAL POSTS
Respond to at least two of your classmates’ initial posts. Use the following downloadable Peer-Review Chart to help you offer your classmates specific, constructive feedback to help with revising and strengthening their main point about the problem (how it can be solved), their recommendation itself, and how well it might motivate the intended audience. Each response should be at least 100 words long and should include relevant questions aimed at engaging your classmates and helping them to reflect on their main point and development of ideas. Include references to Unit reading material and concepts in your responses to help validate your suggestions about writing improvement. Then, copy and paste your completed Peer-Review Chart to the Discussion Board.

Help the writer see what he or she did well	Find one quality in the draft that is particularly effective. Explain why it’s a strong quality and why the writer should keep this.
Evaluate the main point	If you were the intended professional audience for the proposal, what do you think the writer could do differently to strengthen the main point about the problem and solution so that the writer’s point is clear and immediately understood?
Look over the information, details, and research the writer chose to include	What could the writer do to strengthen the information used and the development of ideas in the paper? Do the details, information, or research consistently support the main point? What needs to be taken out because it isn’t relevant to the main point? What other or more relevant information, detail, or research evidence could the writer include to more effectively support the main point? How can the writer improve the summaries of source information and APA citations for the source?
Plan for revising	What parts of the report are either unclear or confusing and what could the writer do to improve these sections of the proposal? What do you suggest the writer plan to do during revision to make the proposal stronger, more persuasive, and more effective overall?

FOLLOW UP RESPONSES

Also respond to questions and comments your classmates and instructors post in their responses. Each follow up response should be around 50 words.