Critical reflection

 

As UCS comes to an end, I think that this module has been quite useful, equipping me with relevant skills required for the future. In my earlier self-introduction letter, I mentioned my goals for this module was to improve my presentation skills, and to be more confident in interviews. And after learning about presentation skills taught during UCS lessons, I can definitely see an improvement in my confidence and skills. For example, I learnt a lot from Monroe’s Motivated Sequence, which is a persuasive speech outline with 5 steps, namely attention, need, satisfaction, visualization, and action. I used this speech outline to prepare for the team-based oral presentation and felt that I was much more confident and natural while presenting, while also including a persuasive aspect, which is something that was not taught or required in previous presentations. I am sure the presentation skills I learnt will be very important in the future, especially in the workplace, where pitches and presentations are usual practices. I feel that I have achieved the goals that I set earlier in the module. For my communication and critical thinking skills, I realised through the lessons that reflections are an extremely important aspect of critical thinking. If reflections are not done, I would not be able to learn anything from that subject or topic because I would not be thinking on what could be improved on it and what was wrong with it. I believe that everything can be improved and have learning points, especially for this module. And this can only happen through reflections. Even after this module ends, I hope to sharpen my skills through other presentations and reports that I will encounter during my time in SIT, and beyond.

During the research project, I learnt a lot on communicating and working together with my groupmates. Even though we had not worked together before, I think we produced an incredible product through the collective efforts of all of us, not just any individual. And that was I took away from this project, the power of teamwork. A project can only be successful with the combined efforts of everyone, so each member must contribute and be active in it. This will be especially useful in the workplace, where many things will be a collaborative effort, and so working together effectively and communicating with each other is crucial to its success. Even while studying, there are other group projects and collaborative assignments, which my skills learnt can be applied to. Other than the groupwork, I felt that I improved on my writing skills as well. In the past, I mostly wrote reports and essays without really thinking, transferring data and doing it blindly. But while writing the technical report, I was inspired by the lessons on writing an effective technical report. Furthermore, my teammates and I encouraged each other and gave each other feedback on our writing skills. Feedback and peer review is also an important part of this module, allowing us to learn from one another and to learn things that we would not have realised otherwise. I have always thought of learning to be static and mundane but from this module, I realised that it can be something new and impactful. From the peer reviews and from Professor Brad’s comments, I am always able to take something different each time and improve another aspect of it. Going forward, I hope to be able to apply the skills learnt in any aspect of my life.