Critical Reflection

-

Personally, I am a firm believer of communication being an important method of connecting between two parties. I always have great respect for people who are able connect well with others through the way they communicate as it is a trait that I am greatly lacking in. Since my younger days, I have always been terrible at conveying my thoughts, and this tends to lead to cases where people misinterpret what I am trying to convey. Truthfully speaking, I felt nervous and uncertain when I noticed that effective communications was part of my module this trimester. However, a part of me hoped that through this module, I am able to better communicate with my peers or the audience. Thankfully, as the module progress, I learnt to convey myself better through the impromptu minor presentations and team work assigned by Professor Brad. These experiences truly helped me structure my words and thoughts to convey efficiently.

There were many minor presentations throughout the module, and as much as I disliked it, these impromptu presentations truly did help improve my communication skills. It made me understand the basics of an efficient presentation such as understanding the audience, and understanding the content I am presenting fully. By understanding my audience, I am able to effectively convey my thoughts by modifying my presentation according to their needs. Likewise, by understanding the content I am presenting, it would allow me to be fluent and organised in conveying my message efficiently. Aside from these, I have also learnt that an effective body language was of utmost importance for a successful presentation. An effective body language would portray confidence in oneself and also better capture the attention of the audience.  These three learning points managed to drastically improve the way I convey my thoughts efficiently, and it gave me the confidence in future presentations.

Along with my improvements in presentations, my writing skills have improved with the research project that was being done as a team with Kai Yee, Nicholas, and Darren. Being in-charge of researching the benefits for our product, information stated in the technical report was obtained through online research. This resulted in constant rephrasing or paraphrasing of sentences to prevent plagiarism, and it was the cause of disjointed flows in my paragraphs. Thankfully, I have Nicholas and Kai Yee who were both fantastic at organising the report. I was impressed by how Nicholas was able to structure sentences that makes the report sounds more professional, and also by how Kai Yee was able to simplify over-complicated sentences to make it fit seamlessly into the paragraphs. These two teammates of mine were able to structure the report in a way that I would not be able to do so. Darren did a fantastic job on the interview, and it allows our team to have better targeted research on the product. For the presentation, I would say my team did a fantastic job with it. Nicholas did a smooth opening which allows ease of takeover from Darren, and Darren enthusiasm in his speech was something that amazed me. Kai Yee did a wonderful job in explaining her portion of presentation, and how she made relevant of her speech to her slides was impressive as well. I believe there were many takeaways from this research team that can be applied in the future.

Throughout this module of effective communications, I managed to learn so much useful skills for my future applications. Not only did I learn from Professor Brad, I also learnt plenty from my classmates, such as, Nicholas and Kai Yee who possess both fantastic presentation skills and writing skills, and Darren who possesses great enthusiasm in his presentation. It was truly a great journey and I will definitely apply the skills I learnt here in my future endeavours such as Capstone or my future careers.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Self-Introduction Letter

-
Subject: Self-Introduction Email Dear Professor Blackstone My name is Amos Bian, and I am currently studying civil engineering in Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) as a year 1 student. Before enrolling into SIT, I graduated Nanyang Polytechnic with a diploma in engineering with business. Being a son of a project manager, I grew up listening to my father talk about the projects he had undertaken. Those discussions sparked my interest in his job, and it resulted in me wanting to become like my father. I have taken up leadership roles in both army and secondary school in the past which made me more comfortable in speaking. As a leader, there is a need for me to communicate with my superiors and my subordinate on various instructions given while ensuring that it is clear, and this made me become more outspoken as a person. However, I do have a tendency to stutter which will cause confusions, and this resulted in it being unorganized and rushed at times. Being in this course, I wo...
Read more

Self-Healing Concrete Summary + Reader Response Draft 4

-
In the article, “The Self-healing Concrete That Can Fix Its Own Cracks”, Spinks (2015) described an innovation that Jonkers invented, which was embedding self-activating bacteria into concrete to make it self-healing. He stated that the bacteria can exist for up to 200 years as long as particles exist for it to feed on, and also mentioned that the bacteria would start producing limestone to repair the cracks when water starts seeping into the cracks. He also noted that the self-healing concrete was unable to repair large cracks, and only capable of repairing cracks up to 0.8mm wide. According to Jonkers, a cubic meter of concrete costs €70, while the self-healing concrete costs €100. Nonetheless, Jonkers remarked that some countries with coastal communities or tropical regions with extreme rainfall are seeing the cost-benefit analysis of using the self-healing concrete. It was concluded by Jonkers that these tests were done in developing countries where they see profits in the future....
Read more

Importance of communication skills for engineers

-
 “Communication skills are an essential component in the education of engineering students to facilitate not just students’ education but also to prepare them for their future careers.” Marc Riemer, Faculty of Engineering, Monash University (2007) My thoughts: Communication skills is a necessity for engineering students' education as it plays an important role in their future careers. For example, being able to communicate with clients or pass information around requires good communication skills. Hence, communication skills should be part of an engineering students' education.
Read more