BLOG POST #4: FINAL REFLECTION ON LEARNING

Week 13 has arrived and I have finally come to the end of the module, ES2007S. Through this course, I was introduced to a myriad of useful content from the skills needed for effective communication to writing resume letters and proposals and the techniques used in persuasive speeches.

The one aspect that I found extremely useful was persuasive speeches as it made me reflect about how I could make audience identify with my points better. As opposed to the Peer Teaching activity that focused more on techniques relating to delivery of content, I initially found the Oral Presentation aspect to be quite challenging. In the mock oral presentations, I felt that I was merely regurgitating content without considering if the audiences were internalizing the content that I had presented. However, with my teammates’ help and re-watching the series of videos screened during class-time, I have learnt much about how visualization techniques could be used to enhance the impact of a particular problem and interpreting statistics to relate the situation to personal self/community.  Personally this exercise was extremely rewarding and fruitful, as it had opened my perspective to different techniques of presentation.

At the start of the course, I was slow in opening up to my teammates due to my introverted nature. Hence, I felt that there seemed to be a barrier of communication between us. However, over the weeks in which we did up the group presentation and proposal and despite minor misunderstandings, I am glad that we generally worked well as a team. For instance, I remembered that my teammates willingly made accommodations for the meeting to be postponed to another day when I had a sudden test scheduled on that day. This experience made me realized the importance of accommodation and discussing any issues collectively with your teammates to come to the most appropriate solution together.

All in all, this module has been a joy to take and I thank Mdm Fazilah, my team-mates (Anna and Manish) and the class for the experience (: All the best for the upcoming examinations.

BLOG POST #3: REFLECTION ON TEAM-BASED RESEARCH PROJECT PROPOSAL

Over the course of 6-7 weeks in crafting out the team-based proposal, there were a number of essential takeaway points that I had gathered. Firstly in a group work, there were bound to be differences in opinions amongst team members towards the subject of focus. Nonetheless, I was glad that this obstacle was surmounted whereby we sat down and exchanged the ideas that we had in mind. Subsequent weighing of the pros and cons behind our various ideas was also essential in deciding the most effective means of presenting our proposal. In addition, it was also when some of our ideas were combined together that our proposal was better presented. Through this, I have learnt the importance of respecting others’ opinions as careful consideration could possibly lead to a brand new idea that I personally would never have thought of. This would be a classic example of how brainstorming can lead to development of new ideas in the working industry and possibly place a company ahead of others. 

However, there were some aspects that I felt that my team could improve on. While we delegated tasks that were to be completed by a certain deadline, these were not adhered to and pushed to the last minute. Sometimes, certain team members had to take over the workload from other members, resulting in extra burden and stress especially when the deadline of submission was approaching. In retrospect, I felt that this could be improved on if there was greater commitment on every member’s part to contribute to the proposal. This could be facilitated by active communication through emails and sms messages where we could remind each other of our tasks and push for the completion of the allocated tasks. Similarly, these skills of active communication are undoubtedly applicable in future workplace settings whereby it is of utmost importance to work together as a team and understand each other's commitments in order to complete the task at hand.