Critical Reflection

The very first day I stepped into effective communication I had no expectation for effective communication class, this is due to the experience I had when I was in polytechnic. I am grateful that Professor Brad made it clear to us so that we know what was expected of us at the end of this module, he also kept on giving constructive feedback for improvement.

The very first reflection I did was for my introduction letter, I looked back at what are some of the stuff I needed to learn, unlearn and relearn. With that, I set some specific learning objectives such as giving constructive feedback, taking constructive feedback, and communicating in a clear and precise manner. In this module, I have been taught about the importance of feedback and how to give constructive feedback and glad that there is a lot of assignment in this module that requires peer evaluation. Through all the peer evaluation assignments, I can put what I have learned into practice. The evaluations I gave and received regarding verbal and written communication is a very important aspects of effective communication as well as a team project.

Without a doubt, this module has helped me to become better at public speaking and most importantly my critical thinking. With the framework such as Paul elder or 7Cs, it has helped me to organize my thoughts clearly before I speak up. In which I can deliver a clear and meaningful message with confidence to get my message across to the receiver.

I have learned a lot under the guidance of Professor Brad, and I am grateful for his effort to help us make improvements. But learning does not stop here, I received quite a lot of constructive feedback for my formal presentation and I will continue to make improvements on my language by conversing with fluent English and proper pronunciation, also conquer my fear of presentation by treating every presentation opportunity seriously so that I can put on a good performance for my IWSP presentation.

While working on the group project, I learned a lot not just about the writing skills, but also about contributing to team discussion, especially for the literature review of the Auto-Rack. There is a lot of ideas, and each of us had to do our part. In the past during group projects, the weekly meetup was needed so we can do our work together. But my experience from this module had change the way I look at meetings. Every meeting needs to have a very clear objective and job distribution, this ensures that every one of us can share our individual research with the rest of the team during discussion and make progress instead of doing research together during meetings.

The experience of report writing totally changed my perception of writing. I was able to practice what I have learned about report structure, parallelism, tone, citations and language. I am happy to be receiving feedback constantly on the team report, for which I learned a lot from my mistake and linked to what was taught in class to continue improving on report writing.

Through this group project, I can truly experience what is like to write a technical report and do a formal presentation which I have never done before. This will benefit me not just in university, but also in my future career because I will have to work with different people around me on projects that require a team effort. Communication skills such as presentation and report writing will be in use wherever I go.

It has been a wonderful and fruitful 13 weeks of effective communication class, I appreciate all the guidance from Professor Brad. His enthusiasm and professionalism are truly remarkable, I am always looking forward to his class.

Date: 9 April 2022 1.35am