Self-Evaluation Memo

Learning Objectives
Identify and define rhetorical contexts and conventions of different written and oral communications appropriate to professional communication.
Reflect meaningfully on individual and collaborative work
Effectively evaluate your learning and look ahead to future applications of that learning
Purpose and Description
For this assignment you are asked to create a self-evaluation, a common format used in most industries to evaluate employee performance and to create goodwill.
This assignment allows you to practice this genre of communication while considering your developments in English 314 and how you might use those skills to move forward in your career as a student and professional.
Communication Scenario
Self-evaluations are a common part of the employee review process and are considered a critical part of healthy and productive work environment.
Reflection and goal setting allow you to consider and feel good about your successes and can foreground ways you might capitalize and build on that success as well as improve on any shortcomings in the future. It provides the opportunity to voice goals and retain learned experience and provides the audience with the opportunity to connect with you and better understand your performance.
A self-evaluation will convince your reader that you have met goals, are capable, have grown throughout the specified evaluation timeline, and have developed goals for the future.
For this final assignment, compose a one-page evaluation memo of your performance in English 314.
Address the outcomes for the course (found below under “Resources”) and make claims about your learning experiences. Support any claims with specific assignments, preparatory assignments, readings, discussion boards, quizzes, and group work.
Address your group’s communication and performance, and your role in the projects, throughout the technical description and feasibility report assignments. Consider success and areas for improvement and how these experiences were opportunities for learning. Discuss goals you have for your future as a student and/or professional based on this experience.
Discuss goals you have for your future as a student and/or professional based on your experiences in this course. Be specific about your field or career path and the communication that is expected within that culture.
Audience
Primary: Your English 314 instructor
Note: Keep audience expectations in mind. This document is not meant as an opportunity to vent about personal emotional responses to the course content or instructor. Nor is it meant as an opportunity to gush about your instructor. This is an opportunity to synthesize and communicate your learning, experience, and goals with your instructor and to practice writing a professional self-evaluation. For example, it would not be appropriate to use a workplace performance evaluation as a platform to vent about your job, workplace, or coworkers, nor would you want to use it as a platform for buttering up your boss.
Assignment Components & Expectations
Employs correct memo format.
Is no longer than one page in length.
Addresses course outcomes as stated in the course policies.
Uses examples to support claims of learning. (e.g. assignments, activities, readings)
Identifies areas for improvement while using positive emphasis.
Identifies goals for the future use of professional communication strategies.
Employs you-attitude throughout.
Eliminates biased language.
Demonstrates use of whitespace through headings, lists, emphasis, and other design elements necessary to help the reader access the information.
Supporting Materials
Chapter 2: Ethical Considerations
Harvard Business Review: How to Write the Dreaded Self-Appraisal (Links to an external site.)
American Management Association: Write Your Own Performance Review  (Links to an external site.)
Lecture Videos from Module 7
Course Outcomes
Apply rhetorical principles to technical communication.
Implement principles of effective design, including the display of quantitative data.
Understand the influences of organizational settings in the composition of technical and professional documents.
Understand the conventions of your discipline and be aware of the variety of conventions across disciplines.
Participate in the collaborative planning and executing of a project.
Understand how ethical issues influence research and application in your discipline.