Reflections on writing the final draft of the eCommunications PS FdA submission document

I’ve just finished completing the last, and I hope final , draft of the submission document for our new degree eCommunications PS FdA. The Validation for this is slightly different from last time. The current process involves:

1.The first draft submission document being sent to a group of readers at Sheffield Hallam University (SHU).

2.These readers sending their comments back to us and we then have about a week to ten days to produce the final draft. We have to either address each comment in the submission document or be able to defend our position if called to do so later on in the validation itself.

3. The final draft is retyped at SHU and distributed to the validation panel who will then read it and prepare comments for the validation.

4. Following, a hopefully successful, validation, we will be probably required to alter some things and then to produce a final validation document which is the last draft of the submission document that incorporates the recommendations of the validation.

We have just finished point 2.


Prior to validation we may be involved in email or other exchanges with the validation panel.

We are also required to have one module fully ready before validation. This in itself isn’t a big job but it will require the setting up of a mirror site of the instance of sheffcol that we are using for our online delivery.

Vaidation has been set for a date between 17.11.09 – 23.11.09 but we haven’t been given the final details yet.

The writing of the last draft has taken me about 15 hours. An interesting aspect of this piece of work was that I realised that I needed to produce 2 documents. One was the draft itself, the second was a record of how I had dealt with the comments from the SHU readers. I needed this second document to be able to explain to Kevin at SHU how I had produced my draft; I also realised that I’d need such a document as a record for later drafting and as a record that I might need to consult in the validation. Initially I thought that the production of this second document would be very time consuming and would deflect me from my main aim. However, when I began to construct this document, I realised that it would be an invaluable tool that would enable me to produce my draft more efficiently. I accordingly produced a table and in one column pasted in the comments I needed to address and in the second column noted the changes, additions etc made to the new draft. I also noted down issues and questions for Kevin.

Shortly after I began to construct this document I realised that what I was also doing was to separate out the more routine, mechanical and less strenuous aspects of my task from the more time consuming and demanding ones. It’s interesting: I often find myself wishing that I was doing something more original and creative and yet I actually organise my work so I can do as much of it as possible in a workaday way. On reflection, this is a good approach, but I was unaware that I was doing this.

I’ve now sent the final version and the second document to Kevin. He has Swine Flu and may not be able to respond before the final deadline for this at 12.00 midday next Tuesday. I don’t think this will be a problem as SHU have said that if we have to, we can submit the draft as it is and any final minor points that haven’t been addressed, can be brought up at the validation.