Asare Opong School District Project

Technical Editing and Review should be a regular process for your Company or Party's media, collateral and projects. Everything from Employee Handbooks to Presentations benefit from a professional overhaul by a technical editor and PR specialist (both Comms qualifications).

Hillary Szydlowski

Client: Adzepa

Adzepa Website & Software Solutions LLC is a Morrisville based web design and maintenance company. The company is international, with another office based out of Effia, Takoradi, Ghana. Their CEO is one Mr. Cudjoe who is also co-founder of the company. He is a graduate alum from Drexel University who works with interns to facilitate their learning.

Adzepa is a faith based company with deep roots in the religious community. It offers programs both to businesses and to churches, and tailors their packages to fit. To better serve the Ghanaian and American communities they recently completed a new website, Adzepa Learning Center. So far it offers mathematics courses, but they have plans to expand in the future, as it is still developing.

The Adzepa Learning Center offers students an interactive class system to prep them for taking the BECE (Basic Education Certificate Examination), grade 1. Their pass rate is nearly 100%, and they are offering the courses in the United States as well.

The Learning Center is unique in that it offers 24 hour access to a teacher. As with other online settings, the student can pause, rewind and replay sessions, and they have an online testing platform as well. Unlike other settings, the student has immediate access to their scores and can retest with different questions immediately. Essentially the platform is set up to move at the student’s pace in order to facilitate their learning.

Both Adzepa and the Adzepa Learning Center feature a clean, to the point, professional communication interface. Their style is uncluttered and straightforward with few layers. The type of English they use is professional formal.

To gain a better perspective on the purpose of their PowerPoint presentation I will explore their goals. It appears to be set up to facilitate a face to face meeting with the Ghanaian school districts in order to integrate the online software program into their curriculums.

The manual on editing that I consulted was “A Presentation Expert’s Tips on Building and Editing Slide Shows” at office.microsoft.com. The questions that are relevant to decide on the reader’s needs are as follows (quote from the site):

What is the Presentations Purpose?

What Are the Messages You Want to Convey?

Who Is the Target Audience?

The presentation is one of the major focuses as it will be a revenue generator, the target audience is the school district and the message is about the product. An additional document was submitted for review as well.

Both items are to be edited for style as well as content. The presentation is in mid May so the final review will take place in the first week. A first edit will take place in a week, and a submission of the changes for review. The client has requested that all changes be denoted in some manner, so a dual submission will occur, one with mark ups shown, one with them directly integrated to show functionality. The process will then be refined based up client feedback and a second edit will be submitted for review the following week. Based upon client response a third and final may occur.

​

Adzepa Progress Report

Hillary Szydlowski

Content:

There were no changes made to the content. The document is a sales piece for software that Adzepa is marketing to the Asare Opong school district. The PowerPoint and document cover the software thoroughly. Given that no access was granted to the software, and it was not listed among the documents to be modified, the content of the document will not be adjusted in any way. I feel that it would be ill advised to change content when I am completely unfamiliar with the product, and do not have an opportunity to become acquainted with it.

With regards to the audience, and the content as it relates to that audience, more information on the BECE and what it means to pass at grade 1 has been gathered. There is a multitude of information, but the essentials are as follows. The BECE is a certification exam which allows for entry into the school complex. The schools select students based on their scores. It is a merit based system. It is a certification, as well as a merit based ranking system. With this additional information, the phrasing throughout the document will be adapted to uniformly represent that the goal is the highest merit tier. Barring this change I will not adapt the content to the audience further, as the audience is a Ghanaian school district and, again, I lack the knowledge base to properly adjust for their needs.

Form:

The form of the document is that of a recommendation report. It has an abstract, executive summary, and methods section and a conclusion. As a sales document the conclusion is also a call to action. With this in mind I will adapt the opening slides to more clearly delineate the change between the abstract and executive summary portions. The abstract bullets will bear examining but, as they are part of a presentation, will not be expanded upon. The methods section is present in the PowerPoint and handout as a series of prompts. Even though they may be expanded upon in print it seemed wise to leave them as they are so that the attention of the viewer may focus on the demonstration.

The change from the methods section to the conclusion flows smoothly, and the change from third to first person marks the conclusion and lets the reader refocus. The shift is jarring but I feel that it will prompt a corresponding change of pace psychologically, which will get the desired result- engagement- on the part of the viewer. This change is shown in the shift from the end of the Student Status Report slide which reads, “Recommendations for assisting students will be submitted as well, based off of the report,” to the following ,”If the child does not have a private teacher at home, we recommend the student copy of the software,” and into, “What option would best serve you right now?”

Style:

Most of the style changes are already in place. The modification of the BECE verbiage will not drastically affect the style of the documents. Both documents have been moved from first and second person to third and the call to action was already in interrogative and imperative voice. An example of this is from the bottom of the 4 Step Excellence Strategy slide. It previously read “If they don’t, we are better acquainted with your school to be of assistance in the future”, and now reads “This leaves Adzepa better equipped to assist in the future”.

The style is now more uniform throughout the document. This makes the call to action more noticeable and the overall style more formal. As a marketing piece and as an example of a professional service I felt a more formal style was in order. The main focus for style was using  “A Presentation Expert’s Tips on Building and Editing Slide Shows” to streamline and polish the slides. The handout was examined to make sure a consistent style was present across both platforms. This also lent itself towards taking the more casual PowerPoint platform and making the tone more professional, as documents tend to be more stringent than slides. 

Mechanics:

A good deal of copyediting has gone into the document. Sentence fragments were eliminated and articles were added. An instance of this is the second bullet one the Objectives slide. Changes have been underlined. Objective number two is, “To explore how this process will extend to other subjects in the next 6 months and beyond.”

 A final review will occur for proper grammar and punctuation. The document is to promote educational software, so the mechanics must be flawless. With this goal in mind, the largest portion of time has been spent rechecking this aspect of both documents. The only phrase which will need to be reworked is the previously mentioned wording of the certification for the BECE. Due to its nature as both a merit based ranking and a certification the proper grammar for achieving the desired result- a grade 1 rank- will be subject to review.

Sentence structure was rearranged to more strictly adhere to AP Style grammar. Special attention was paid to creating sentences that were streamlined and direct, with a clear object. An example of this is from the Short Response Time slide which previously read “Student receives scores instantly after taking tests and can retest with different questions instantly”, and now reads, “The student receives scores immediately upon the completion of their tests and can retest with different questions instantly”.

​

​

Adzepa Final Report

Hillary Szydlowski

Content:

There were no changes made to the content of this document. Correspondence with the client indicated that they were largely interested in copyediting, and that the client preferred to remain in control of the content of the PowerPoint and handout. Little additional direction was given on the part of the client, aside from clarification on the meaning of BECE.

“BASIC EDUCATION CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION

1. INTRODUCTION
This examination is both for certification and selection to Senior High Schools and Technical Institutions in Ghana

2. ELIGIBILITY

Candidates in the third year of Junior High Schools approved by the Ghana Education Service are eligible to take part in this examination.”

In addition to the above clarification was also received about the meaning of Grade 1.

“4. GRADE 1: It is an excellent grade, the highest of all the grades. It ranges between grade 1 to grade 9.”

With this information the phrasing of the goal for the Adzepa software was reworked. The final phrasing was, “This strategy is personally tailored to each school and achieves nearly 100% grade 1 results for each student.” This statement more accurately expresses the desires of the audience, the Asare Opong school district.

At the client’s suggestion, “I have read through the final draft and i would like to make some suggestions. AT SOLUTIONS 4(Powerpoint), Under OBJECTIVES.... ’increase BECE grades’ I suggest ‘improve on BECE grades’”, the phrasing on another slide was changed as well, to reflect the fact that the grades were tiers, rather than percentages or scores.

Form:

The document and PowerPoint followed the form of a recommendation report with an abstract, executive summary, and methods sections and a conclusion. I endeavored to make a sharper delineation between the abstract and executive summary sections without rearranging the slides too drastically. I did this by modifying the headings, giving the viewer a better feel for the direction of the presentation.

The abstract bullets remained as they were, I decided that it would disrupt the purpose of the PowerPoint as a sales document if they were expanded on. The audience was already familiar with the issue of ranking in the BECE, it was the impetus for their presence. In a scientific or business recommendation report revisiting the issue is desirable but during a sales presentation it can cause the client to lose interest.

As mentioned in a previous report, the conclusion was deliberately left in first person, at odds with the rest of the document which was revised into third person. The client seemed to approve, this change was marked out in the document, as well as mentioned in a list of changes sent by email and the client did not comment, nor reverse them out.

Style:

As mentioned above, the largest change to style was revising the majority of the document and PowerPoint into third person. The tone of the PowerPoint was modified to convey more professionalism. This style change was marked out in a list of changes to the client and, again, received tacit approval.

The reasons for the change were that, as sales documents for software that will eventually address teaching the mechanics of English, it was deemed that the presentation and handout should strictly adhere to the formal AP Style rules of English. Care was taken in phrasing this point with the client. “It was my thought that The Learning Center will branch out into English and as such the documents could adhere strictly to standard grammar.” This phrasing allowed for the introduction of the concept that the presentation could be more professional without insulting the client by implying that it was lacking in any way.

Mechanics:

As a result of the above suggestion, a large amount of work went into reviewing and revising the document and PowerPoint with regards to the mechanics of English. AP Style grammar was applied throughout. Articles were added and sentence fragments were removed. Careful attention was paid to punctuation. Punctuation was left in bulleted text, with the exception that no periods were present at the end of each thought, as they were in a list format. Spelling was not an issue, there were no misspellings throughout the document.

After the edits were inserted the document and PowerPoint were reviewed one final time to ensure that the edits themselves did not contain any grammatical or typographical errors. When none were found the document and PowerPoint were submitted to the client.

Conclusion:

 The client replied with one suggestion only, which was listed at the top of this document under content, “I have read through the final draft and i would like to make some suggestions. AT SOLUTIONS 4(Powerpoint), Under OBJECTIVES.... ’increase BECE grades’ I suggest ‘improve on BECE grades’”. This suggestion was adopted and the PowerPoint was resubmitted. The client has not been in contact since, which I have taken as a tacit approval of the submitted document and PowerPoint as it is my understanding that the presentation was to take place in May and this is the final day of that month.

​

​

​