Critical Reflection

Module learning

I established two goals for myself at the outset of this module that I hoped to attain by the end of the 13-week module. The initial objective was to get over my fear of giving an excellent oral presentation. I learned several crucial components and skills in presenting to others during my time with Prof Blackstone. In previous presentations, I have tend to look at the slides frequently to avoid eye contact and to read directly from the slides. However, I learned and modified many of my behaviours as a result of this lesson, and I felt like I had made a significant improvement in my presentation skills such as a reduction in slides looking while giving a clear and short summarised sentence for listeners to understand. It has also taught me how to critically think about, reflect on, and learn from my experiences. For example, I had the opportunity to present my ideas and thoughts to a small group, which allowed me to identify my presentation flaws and go through a series of thoughts to understand what I was lacking and learn to convey my message in a clear and concise sentence structure so that everyone could understand and absorb my points more easily. The second aim I set for myself was to develop my writing skills in order to become more professional. The relevance of Paul-Elder Critical Thinking in writing a successful essay has been reinforced by this lesson. During my time working on this module, I completed numerous writing exercises and received feedback from peers on how to improve my sentence structure, allowing me to develop my technical writing skills and effectively communicate my thoughts and ideas through writing.

Project learning

 

For my project learning, I noticed that my team and I are having difficulty communicating our ideas and messages to each other in order to agree on a study topic because many of the ideas provided have already been explored, therefore we are having difficulty getting started. Nonetheless, my team members were patient in the rejection of ideas and seeking for new ones, and as a result, aeroshell was born, along with autonomous hot-swap capabilities. Through this project, I've gained a better understanding of my team, particularly our secretary Wei Hau, who has been extremely helpful in providing remedies to our report writing skills as well as critical feedback on my oral presentation skills. His gesture of kindness provided me with an opportunity to work on improving my weaknesses in word choice. I've also learned a lot of insight into my weaknesses and eventually found alternative ways to eliminate them thanks to the aid of my team members in providing comments, regardless of my presenting or writing skills. This project has ultimately led me to appreciate my time working on projects as a group since I am able to build on my weaknesses with the support of my peers and increase my own growth in order to upskill myself in the future.

Last but not least, communication is a skill set, not just a single skill that you either have or don’t have. It takes practice and commitment and can be applied in a variety of scenarios. For that reason, I would continue to improve my writing and oral communication skills by further reading journal articles and learning from their vocabulary and writing structure using Paul Elder's Framework and Critical Reflection technique.