Reflections on Persuasion - COMM 333
I feel that that I have completed some of my best work, in comparison to my other classes, through our assigned blog posts. At the beginning of the semester, building and designing our very own Wix page for the Eportfolio project seemed like a daunting task. I did not realize how much I would enjoy trying different templates and finishing the look for the Part 1 assignment, and it was an enjoyable way to creatively approach the assignment. The Eportfolio that I built for myself and used as my Wix blog page throughout this semester is definitely an advantage that I have for myself now, because it will be a great asset when attempting to build my presence during my career and job search. Having an online site that is an encapsulation of my education and work history is an incredible benefit to the development of my image with interviewers or future supervisors, and I’d like to thank Mrs. Lietzenmayer for introducing it and giving this platform to me so that I can use it to achieve my career goals. I truly think I have already improved my professional presence by including the link to my site on my resume, and will continue to build the Eportfolio by adding future course work and the best of my past college-level work. It has helped me establish the foundation of my resume, and gave my experience, skills, and accomplishments a tangible place to demonstrate my professionalism.
The thing I like most about the Eportfolio is that it never has to be finished. It is a place that I can control, design and curate whenever I feel the need to include new work or changes to my experience. Wix is a great and beneficial site for any student to create their own personal brand; an Eportfolio is a platform to market one’s own expertise, accomplishments, and personality to possible employers so that they can get a better understanding of one’s range of skills and character traits. So the thing that is most exciting about having my own Eportfolio is that I can edit and improve upon the design and content as needed, and as I learn new skills and gain more experience, I will update the page to appropriately translate who I am and what I can do through my online presence.
I enjoyed most of the posts I wrote for the Persuasion blog, although my favorite assignment was in Part 3, when the class had to analyze the persuasiveness of a film’s narrative and content. Why this is my favorite is largely due to the fact that I enjoy film analysis very much, and with every chance I get to use movies or TV shows as my subject, it usually ends up being my hardest and best written work. Critiquing Zootopia’s plot for its persuasive themes and topics was enjoyable because I am a fan of the movie and its messages. So taking what I had learned from the course such as theories like TRA and other persuasion topics like credibility, and applying them to the plot details of the film was very interesting and a learning experience, even for a fan of the movie.
The most challenging aspect of the Eportfolio projects was in the initial stages. Although it was fun to create my own website and build my online resume, designing the page’s layout itself was a new venture for me and I was unsure of how Mrs. Lietzenmayer would grade the final look. It became stressful after spending an hour navigating through Wix’s design tools and picking templates, and then deciding I needed to change the aesthetics and style. Organizing all of the information I wanted to include while keeping it concise and formatted nicely was more difficult than I thought it would be. The first part of the Eportfolio was definitely the most tedious and intimidating task that I completed for the class.
If I were to train new students on how to build their first Eportfolio, first I would tell them to make sure they put time aside to work on it. Having time to be fully committed to designing and creating it is important because it is not just a place to create blogs posts; it can be used as an online resume and help establish a person professionally. You want it to look its best and appropriately display all of your skills, achievements, and character traits so that they translate well to employers or interviewers. Also, I would advise that they read Wix’s helpful guides for building a page to make the initial stages much easier.
Throughout the class, I learned a lot of new information about communication in general and how persuasion is used in our daily lives. I knew the part I’d find most interesting would be studying how it is used in advertisements and marketing, and the motivation appeals component of the class was my favorite section of the course. Learning the different ways persuaders can capture the attention of their audience through appealing to their emotions is something I thought I had a basic understanding of, but this course taught me much more than I already knew and opened my eyes to different characteristics of effective persuasion. I enjoyed the motivational appeals presentation assignment because I got to analyze ads of my choosing, and it was very interesting to critically think about those ads in ways I had never thought to.
Through the assignments and readings, this class has definitely taught me many new things about persuasion in communication, and although my view of the subject is not much different, I know I have gained a lot of knowledge that I did not have previously. My view of persuasion is still that it can be used as either a positive thing, or a negative force, and it is up to the sender of a message to be responsible for how it is communicated to the audience. My only view change occurred when I learned that the receiver’s perception is a much more important part of how persuasive a message can be than I initially thought. It is something that is a fundamental part of daily communication; basically wherever there is a message, persuasion is involved.
