Critical Reflection

Module learning:

Initially, my goal for this Effective Communication Course was to improve my presentation and writing skills, which I hoped to achieve by the end of this module. After attending Professor Blackstone’s classes, I learnt more about these skills through group pitches or classroom sharing sessions, which significantly increased my confidence for presentation and english communication skills. 

In the beginning,  I was extremely worried and did not have much confidence to do a presentation in front of my classmates and the Professor. I could recall the first time when I chose to recite a paragraph text and I was so nervous that I stuttered and mispronounced numerous words. After a few lessons, I managed to step out of my comfort zones to speak comfortably and actively participate in all the activities with my classmates. This helped me to develop and build up my confidence level in public speaking after these lessons. 

Based on my oral presentation performance, I am more confident in my presentation skills now compared to when I started this module. I learnt that with consistent practicing, I can strive further to further improve my presentation skills. 

Also, I learnt more about proper APA referencing, which includes their format and purposes, etc. When I was in polytechnic, I usually used an online APA generator to generate reference citations and did not use in-text citations before as I was unsure how to differentiate a credible source to use for report writing. From this module, I learnt the proper way to do APA references and in-text citations without using an online generator. With the use of google scholar and SIT library, I can filter and get more credible sources for my report writing. 

Overall, it was an enriching learning experience that allowed me to improve my presentation skills after these learning sessions. 

Project learning:

We were tasked to work on a research project with a team of 4 members. I appreciate being in this team as there are no major issues or arguments throughout the duration. One of the takeaways from this technical report was teamwork skills. Based on my past experience with team reports, each of the members will be assigned to our part and come together to compile the work that we did not conduct any discussion session. However, for this assignment, my team met on the weekend and online to share and discuss research or ideas we gathered for our technical report and to make sure everyone is on the same page. This helps to improve my communication skills where I need to express my ideas and opinions for my teammates to understand. With this discussion session, I can understand more about my topic which gives me the motivation to work on this assignment as I know what is going on. 

Lastly, I would like to thank Professor Blackstone and my classmates who helped me with improving my presentation and writing skills. I believe that the skills I gained from this module would be of great help in my future. I am proud to achieve the goals that I had set at the beginning of the class.