Critical Reflection

The Effective Communication Module was an enlightening learning opportunity. The professor, Prof. Brad Blackstone, introduced challenges to the students in coming up with a technical report for a mechanical design project idea and giving an oral presentation to the module's whole class. The intention was to help simulate what the students will encounter in future careers, which I feel was an excellent experience. 

At the start of the module, the weaknesses I had mentioned in the first formal letter were overcoming anxiety for oral presentations, avoiding awkward pauses, and maintaining a constant pace when speaking. On the other hand, my goals were to gain skills to communicate with my colleagues what I wish to achieve with them from the project without being ambiguous. With Prof. Brad's guidance, the effective communication module has given several tasks to explore different writing forms during the lesson. The writing of design summary analysis has given me insight into how one should summarise and paraphrase parts of an article without aviating away from the author's intentions while avoiding plagiarism through in-text citations and referencing. Although the APA citation style was confusing to follow, I was able to abide by the citation style with patience. 

Another improvement I have seen in myself is overcoming my anxiety. Although I have confidence in speaking in front of big crowds due to my experiences on-stage performances, I would have a sense of doubt and anxiety during presentations. I was not confident in capturing the audience's attention or portraying the intentions of the presentation. Prof. Brad has always encouraged students to read out the instructions,  rubrics, or writings based on the tasks at hand in front of the class, allowing us to accustom ourselves to speaking in front of the audiences. Reading in front of the class allowed Prof. Brad to give us feedback on our tone, projection and pronunciation of words, and classmates to understand each others' abilities in speaking. And due to the group assignment of coming up with an engineering proposal to the market, we had to pitch our idea to the class and do an oral presentation of our proposal. The group had to understand the purpose of the presentation, the proposal's contents to present and prepare each other to give an excellent formal presentation. That was when I knew that going through the contents several times helped me overcome my anxiety during the oral presentation. 

At the start of researching for existing solutions to improve on, it was hard for my group to think of what kind of solutions we want to focus on. I suggested to my group to look up solutions that help preserve nature or keep it clean. After learning how to identify a problem and purpose statement through our research, we could pitch to each other our findings and proposals. Because it is important to build each other up in our communication skills, we gave each other honest feedback to move forward in learning. It was hard at the beginning since we do not wish to hurt each others' feelings, but we could manage.
In our technical report, we did the same; commenting on each others' portion of work to see where we can improve and encourage one another for our good works. These approaches have shown me that being honest and trusting one another helps in achieving great teamwork. 

In conclusion, peer feedback is essential no matter the position of each member. Just like how it takes two hands to clap and many strands of wire twisted together to becomes a strong cable, a team can achieve their best through peer evaluation. On the other hand, the writing and oral speaking skills I have learned from the module are inevitably essential. I want to take this chance to thank Prof. Brad for his fun and engaging lessons and for being patient with my classmates and me. Pray that I will never forget all the skills you have taught us for the past thirteen weeks.