During my time in ENGL 218: Digital Rhetoric and Writing I have learned a vast amount of knowledge through my research in women’s equality in sports. When it comes to the discourse community I engulfed myself in there was a lot I learned that I will take with me in being an effective communicator in other communities. While conducting our research each one of us became somewhat of an expert on our topics, so when discussing our topics we needed to communicate it in a way that would make sense to our peers. For me, I tried to make the communication of my information relatable, so my viewers would feel connected to the research I conducted. I still need to learn how to use technology to my advantage when communicating digitally.

One thing I struggled with in this course was using the technology we were assigned to communicate effectively. In each one of my assignments I somehow managed to make a mistake that was technology related. Through each mistake I did learn how to fix it, but I hope to become more confident with my technology use so in the future I can use the same technology we used in this course in my class.

My main purpose of my writing this semester was to give a voice to an issue that is pressing female athletes. For example, in my Wikipedia article I added information that discusses the injustices placed on women in sports and how they still exist today. I wanted my audience to see these injustices in the content I produced and spark interests for them to advocate for the issue at hand.

The genres I learned best about this semester were genres pertaining to media. I have never written for media genres, so this was an interesting experience. It did feel like a lot of pressure at times knowing information I was writing about would be able to be seen on the web. This responsibility encouraged me to be cognizant of my tone in my writings because I knew my work would be seen by a larger mass than just one person.

The peer review aspect of my writing process in this course was a saving grace. Hearing what my peers had to say on my work allowed me to edit it, so that the work I was producing was beneficial to my discourse community and audience. There were times where my original draft did not effectively communicate information, so after my peers acknowledging that I was able to edit my work so that it did communicate effectively.

My biggest key takeaway from this course was how powerful digital communication can be. We live in a society that is centered around technology, so it is important to communicate effectively in digital modes.