Critical Reflection Report

 Critical Reflection Report

In week one, I came into class not knowing how this module could potentially make a difference in the way I communicate and my thinking process. In fact, presenting confidently in front of an audience and being able to think critically to convey messages effectively are my targets that I intend to achieve by the end of thirteen weeks. In my opinion, what was meaningful yet miniscule was the number of times the professor made us speak in front of the class every lesson. I value the number of times I was told to speak up as I took it as platform to slowly build my confident to speak up in front of an audience. The assignments given were quite comprehensive, yet the online platforms given to feedback for every activity that we did was fruitful. I took these platforms to my advantage to learn effectively and improve after every class activity. Other than the use of online feedback platforms, doing group activities and assignments allow me to receive face to face constructive feedback and receiving it in directly in class. This method allows me to consider what other people’s perspective are of me, and I learn how useful feedback can be whether good or bad, which can help me to analyze critically on my mistakes and perform better. In order to consistently improve on my communication skills, I feel that I have to always be receptive to feedback and always seeking to improve.

 

Apart from how useful this module has been, the preparation for the oral presentation along with the technical report has provided me a good exposure of learning points and has shaped me to who I am today. However, the tedious part would be the individual aspect where we would be assessed individually despite presenting as a group. I took the lessons of oral presentations of high importance as I felt that it was an area where I could hone my presentation skills. I did pay close attention to how the professor speaks, uses his non-verbal cues, making eye-contact while speaking, making use of space. It was quite influential to me as he was an exemplary to the class. This helps me to visualize how a confident speaker should present himself in front of an audience. Being nervous always affected my presentations in the past and I wanted to improve on it. The way the professor countlessly emphasized the importance of making a pitch makes me realize the gravity of this opportunity that I have right now to learn and make mistakes before doing an actual pitch as an engineer to an actual stakeholder in the future. I enjoyed the preparation as I had my groupmates with me the whole time, practicing our presentation in front of each other and assessing each other’s mistakes. I certainly appreciate the difficult times we had as a group as we learn to help one another, motivate each other when things were falling apart, understand each other’s working styles and make efforts to gel with each other. I believe that these were key takeaways when working with a group and I was grateful to work alongside my groupmates throughout this assignment. “If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far, go together”. It is undeniable that this quote is evident when my group were working hard for this assignment. In week 13, my confidence and critical thinking skills did improve, and I was very pleased with the outcome of the assignment as well. I was indeed proud of my groupmates for making this far. Individually, I felt that I was able to articulate my ideas better and spoke with my highest confidence. There is always room for improvement and there can never be only way to present in front of an audience. Although we did achieve what we wanted before the start the assignment, I feel that the journey was the essence of the assignment and I managed to reap its learning points at the end of the assignment.