Megan Matthews
Dr. Isbell
Writing for Digital environments
14 October 2021
The platform I am analyzing is an academic journal where I found the case study that I chose for my first piece of writing. I found the academic journal on the school’s database. The school pays to utilize the academic journals, therefore anyone who is not a student has to pay to view the journal which is a definite downside. Another downside is that the school does not pay to use all of the academic journals so if you were to find another article that you found interesting on the database and the school does not pay for it, you cannot view it. Many people are turned away by this and they lose a lot of people who would be willing to read it and educate themselves. However, most if not all journals include a summary of all of the parts of the case study. Therefore, you can find out what the outcome of the study was by reading a few sentences rather than reading four pages worth of information just to figure out what the outcome was. Even if the academic journal is paid for sometimes you cannot fully view the study and read it which I personally find very frustrating. The text is sometimes very difficult to read because of the choice of words they use that most people would not include in a sentence and numbers that have to do with the results can be difficult to understand.
The platform that I published my first piece on was openlab which is a good place to start when you are creating your first website. This is partly due to the fact that it is free and payed by the school but also partly because they don’t give you too much freedom on how you can design your website to your liking. Too many options of themes and other designs can make it overwhelming to choose from. I also like the fact that my website is simple and easy to utilize. However, with the theme that I chose I was struggling to understand how to modify the side bar where viewers can click on the newest posts that I created. The theme platform made it difficult to navigate and figure out how to change it to my liking. On the other hand, Readers can comment on my posts and I can view them, even make comments back to them. I am able to contact other authors on this platform by leaving comments for them or contacting them. On open lab I find that there are only minor issues that I have with this platform and I enjoy posting on it because of its simplicity in that area.
