Critical Reflection

SIE 2016 Effective Communication. A module which I thought I was going to ‘zoom’ through because it was probably going to be like just any other communication module that I have done before. Little did I know, this module was going to be the stepping stone for me in my university life. On the first day of our lesson, which also happened to be the first day that all of us had to come to school, we were told to write our goals for the module. I was skeptical about improving anything but nevertheless, I still wrote a few that I wished to improve on. My goal for this module was to improve on presenting my ideas in front of big groups and learn how to hold conversations longer.

Through the module, I learnt how to make good presentations. Although improvisation during acting is one of my favourite things to do, presenting in general is just a different ballgame. I learnt how to make effective slides such as adding relevant photos and presenting points in parallel structure can help someone digest the content of the slides easier. These skills were eventually used when I was assigned to make the slides for our c-programming project and sensor presentations. However, I feel there are still rooms for improvement such as the choice of information to present during a presentation. 

 Although the second point was never really touched on during this module, through our professor’s way of peer teaching, I was able to talk to almost everyone in the class through the trimester as we worked on various assignments and projects. This gave me an opportunity to practice talking to people whom i have never met before and understanding more about them.   

The highlight of this module was the project where we had to spend hours curating a proposal report and presentation for the stakeholders. Thankfully for this project, I was being paired with individuals who had different strengths and weaknesses from me. For me, I feel that my weakest part of the project was the report writing. Although I knew what to write, sometimes the words in the mouth just do not turn out the way I wanted them to in Microsoft Word. 

Despite being the cause of slowing down their report writing , my  groupmates never failed to guide me along the way and never left me stranded alone. They ensured I understood each component and how to write them before I was left alone to do my part.  The project made me realize the importance of peer teaching/guidance and how much I depended on them to get through the report writing. 

If there is one major takeaway from the project, it was definitely how I learnt to utilize the report writing skills. Components such as literature review and learning how to properly cite in the APA style are the few that I feel that I would use in the future as my life as a future engineer continues to develop. Furthermore, by citing the source, it gives the author or the article source credits and also as a sign of respect.

In conclusion, this module has taught me various skills that will be useful for me especially throughout my university life. As SIT focuses more on group projects, having this module in the first trimester ensures that the report and presentation later are up to standard and definitely beneficial.