Critical Reflection

Module learning:

As I sat down to type this Critical Reflection, this concludes the end of our effective communication module. On the first day of the lesson while I was looking through the module content, I was actually overwhelmed by the amount of assignment and content that we had to complete over the next two and a half months.

The first assignment was to write a formal letter to our professor to briefly introduce myself and the goals I have for this module. The two goals I hope to achieve by the end of the module was to improve on my presentation (public speaking) skills and to be a better listener. The reason why I couldn’t do well in my presentation was mainly because I tend to get nervous easily speaking in front of a large crowd. As a result, I often find myself stuttering and having long pauses in between that express uncertainty. 

Under Professor Brad Blackstone’s guidance, we were given constructive feedback on how to further improve. His critique includes how we can better position ourselves to the audience during a presentation and how to maintain eye contact to make our audience feel engaged. These small little details can actually augment your stage presence and confidence as well. In order to overcome my fear of public speaking, I learnt that you have to know your topic well, get organized and practise your presentation several times to be comfortable with the content and ask for feedback be it positive or negative.

I strongly believe that effective communication is one of the most important skills, this is especially so when you go out to work in future. Being able to deliver well will draw your audience’s attention and portray your leadership and delivery skills. Therefore, it is important to possess good communication skills.

 

Project learning:

For our research project, after much consideration, we decided to go ahead with the proposal to National Parks Board(NParks) on the use of kinetic tiles to reduce energy consumption. Since Ivy and Syakirah both worked in the engineering industry for a couple of years before deciding to embark on their tertiary education. They shared with us on the knowledge of kinetic tiles and their application. Apart from Isqandar, Ivy and Syakirah are from the other tutorial group which is why we often have a clash of timetable. Nonetheless, we managed to work around our schedule and delegate the task for our technical report. Syakirah, being the oldest in the group naturally took charge of this report by ensuring that we complete our work on time.

I would like to emphasise the importance of communication within team members, having good team synergy within team dynamics is absolutely essential. Through this technical report, I am able to identify each member’s strength and weaknesses.

Syakirah being detailed oriented and organized, she exercises extreme attention to detail and she is very thorough and organized in the structure of the details in the report. Ivy was the one that came up with the pitch idea for the group, she demonstrated her personal strength by being thorough and consistent in doing her research on this technology. On the other hand, Isqandar is someone who is very analytical and precise in paying attention to small details like calculation. Being a resourceful person, I managed to set up an interview with a representative from EcoLabs Centre of Innovation For Energy from the Nanyang Technology University as part of our primary research on kinetic tiles. 

I would like to express my gratitude towards my group members for always being very spontaneous, understanding and willing to share knowledge with one another to help each other out. By working in a group, it allows us to make up for each other’s shortcoming. In future group projects, I would certainly adopt the same approach in building good team relation as to how I did for this module.