Critical reflection

Looking back on the trimester, at the start of this module, my goal was to develop my confidence and to overcome my fears in speaking to a large crowd. By the end of this module, I am happy to say that I have achieved my goals with the help of my peers and Professor Brad. 

The oral presentation and pitching session that we had was the first step towards achieving my goals. The constant push from Professor Brad to speak up during tutorial lessons has forced me to step out of my comfort zone and participate in the class more. Not only that, but he has also guided and provided me with proper steps towards creating slides and presenting them in class. During the rehearsal session with my groupmates - Angelo and Jin Yong, I received feedback and constructive criticism from them and Professor Brad about the areas where I was lacking. I believe that receiving peer feedback helped me to better improve myself as it gave me the chance to better grasp presentation skills. This prevented me from making the same mistakes for the final presentation. 

There were also a couple of classmates that stood out during this session and they amazed me because of the amount of confidence and charisma they had shown when presenting to the class, this has inspired me to further improve myself.

Out of all the reports that were done, the one that stood out most for me was writing the readers response. One specific point that made me reflect on the learning process was writing skills. Through Professor Brad’s lessons, I was able to learn how to write a proper review using the seven Cs of communication and about the different APA citations for reference. Further down in university, I will be able to use what I learn during that lesson and input it into different modules when writing and citing for the report. I believe that following this method of style, I will be able to construct a proper report with a proper flow.

One takeaway I have after going through this entire module is that communication is key. Further down university life, I will be working with different people for my projects. Being able to communicate effectively is perhaps the most important of all life skills. It is what enables us to pass information to other people and to understand what is said to me. The ability to communicate effectively plays a large role in resolving conflicts and preventing potential ones from arising. When your group members understand their roles, the roles of others, and the expectations, they can focus more on their work. With effective communication, conflicts are also resolved quickly.

SIE2016 has been a good way to fine-tune my teamwork whilst really improving my presentation skills. These skills will serve me well when writing and presenting future reports.