Critial Reflection

Module learning

I set 2 goals for myself at the beginning of the module: I wanted to be able to talk and present in front of others with confidence and I wanted to get better at writing and grammar. I believe that after 3 months of the critical thinking and communication module, I have accomplished both objectives. My first accomplishment was raising my writing and grammar standards. Learning about language rules helped my papers flow better and be more consistent. Reports are prevalent in academia, therefore learning this ability will be highly helpful for my future reports. I'm also able to present confidently in front of people. In the tech report presentation, I'm able to project my voice, catch the audience's attention and use visual aids to support me. However, from the review from Prof Brad, I realize that my talking speed is a little too fast and I like to use "hence" a lot, but I still consider my goal accomplished. With the knowledge and skills I learned from the module, I hope to be able to advance my personal development in the future.

Project learning

After 6 weeks of working with 3 other team members, I have learned new report writing and presentation skills. Report writing skills include proper citation conventions(APA) to avoid plagiarism, summary writing, and citing from reliable sources. Presentation skills such as Monroe's Motivated Sequence, PowerPoint design, and voice projection were also learned in this class. These are very exciting and useful skills that I find fun to learn. 

For example, I had never learned APA in my polytechnic and I normally will just copy and paste a link from a website to my report as a reference. I wasn't aware of the seriousness of plagiarism and didn't know that I need to cite the source I use. Now I understand that I will have to properly cite my sources using APA at the end of the text to prevent plagiarism, and use reported speech in my reports. This is really useful as I will definitely be writing lots of technical reports in the further and will prevent me from getting in trouble. 

Monroe's Motivated Sequence and learning to write my PowerPoint in parallel really change my way of presenting and delivering. Before this module, my slides are very wordy and I like to just read from my slides during presentations, making my presentation boring and hard to imagine or relate to. Now with the skills I learn from this module, I know how to grab the attention of my audience using relatable audience interaction and interesting visual aids, making my presentation more lively and natural.

In conclusion, compared with myself before this module, there has been a great improvement in both reports writing and delivering skills. Although there are still areas for improvement such as having a better connection between paragraphs, use of reported speech in summary and slowing down my talking speed while delivering. I see myself being more professional and confident when doing reports and presentations.