Critical Reflection

 

Module learning:

At the start of the module, I set out to achieve two goals. The first goal was to improve my writing capabilities, as reports and written proposals are crucial for university studies. I feel that I have achieved that to a certain extent, as I can now look back at the reports I am writing now compared to what I did in polytechnic and see a stark difference in terms of formatting, language usage, and flow, to name a few.

The second goal was to learn effective verbal communication techniques due to the need for complex technical information to be delivered accurately and efficiently. As the module progressed week after week, I learnt a lot of different techniques regarding communication skills such as choosing the correct register when speaking, ensuring making eye contact with your audience along with engaging them if possible so as to not lose their focus and even small things such as how to transition between teammates for a team presentation. I feel that I have achieved what I wanted to achieve regarding learning communication skills. 

In terms of building on my communication skills and critical thinking skills, I managed to work on being more confident when speaking to a class with the help of Professor Blackstone with active engagement and asking students to read information to the class. Another skill would be learning effective citations and how to identify a reliable source for the reader's response and technical report.

Project learning: 

Focusing on the group presentation/pitch that we had to give to the class, coming into it I was not confident in giving a technical heavy presentation as I didn't have much experience doing it during my polytechnic studies. Key factors such as how to construct the slides to make them informative to the audience but at the same time not overwhelming them with visuals, the importance of having a good opening and conclusion to the presentation and having effective command of the space were virtually unknown to me and made me worried for the presentation. 

During the mock presentation, I felt that I had a lot to improve on as issues such as sidetracking off the main points due to forgetting the points, correcting sentences due to wrong information that I said the sentence before and not speaking for a long enough duration to match my teammates. This led me to worry about the actual presentation and caused a bit of overthinking whether the presentation would be successful. However, after getting feedback from the group we were presenting to, discussing it with my teammates and watching the other group presentation on the first day, I learnt skills such as knowing how to properly control your speaking pace to not sound too rushed, how to format the slides to make it easier for the audience to view and follow along with what you are speaking and what to avoid like constantly looking at the slides and not maintaining proper eye contact.