Isabel's Final Reflection

Almost approaching to the end of the course, frankly speaking, I really enjoy this fabulous course through the whole semester. It is a very special course which I have never taken before. Firstly, the most attractive part is the course style where our professor always leads us to engage in communication and to have a lot of interactive learning. Under this open learning atmosphere, I feel very relax and engage in actively learning. 


Overall, via this module, despite the oral presentation, another impressive thing I learned is about interview. I have to say the professor really design this part very well. Through the theoretical knowledge learning, peer teaching and mock interview practice, I acquired the in-depth understanding of interview. Especially, getting critique of the cover letter by the professor, I get the idea of how to write a concise and effective cover letter. 


Furthermore, the most effective way to absorb the knowledge is via our peer teaching. Initially, I was very worried about this “peer teaching” thing since I have never experienced before. We should act like a “teacher” to deliver the knowledge to make students understand and learn from our topic of interview. Actually, it was a big job to prepare this peer teaching because interview contains various aspects which need to be covered and as a fresher, I must first comprehend it thoroughly and then give the peer teaching. 


However, I am very lucky to have my group members to cooperate and help with each other to prepare this big topic. We worked as an effective group to implement our plan on this topic smoothly and each one had a precise designated work to cover each aspect of interview. Also, we practiced and rehearsed a lot of times in order to deliver a good peer teaching. Through this process, I really experienced a comprehensive learning about the essence of interview. 

  

Overall, this ES2007 module is providing a lot of fun to me and l really enjoy taking this course and gaining knowledge from it. Reluctant to say goodbye to professor and all my dear classmates, I sincerely hope all of you all the best and enjoy every happy day!!!

Lastly, to recommend a useful link (TED) to help us improve our presentation skills and gain worldwide knowledge:  http://www.ted.com/

Final Reflection

   

Mummy, it's over!! '*sobs* 

This is the first elective module that I've taken without consulting the modulereview website or my friends. Initially, I planned to take this module with some of my friends, but eventually most of them decided not to since they found out that the module workload was going to be extremely heavy. That and the fact that it's a communication course, which they believe that they wouldn't be able to perform well in it since they wouldn't want to speak up in class. :/  

Getting this module was much of a hassle as CORS had precluded Science Year 1 students from taking it. After several phone calls and emails, I finally could bid for the module. I later found out that the reason might be because they offer SP1001 to science students, which made me wonder if all that effort was worth it. But I'm glad I was assertive enough for the administrative staff to allow me to take this module.

To me, taking a module by myself is rather daunting, especially a module involving project work, which requires a lot of luck in finding good project mates. Thank goodness Lady Luck was on my side this time round. I've had some bad experience with project work, where some of the team members simply do not care, or that it might be beyond their ability for them to accomplish certain tasks well, resulting in the rest picking up the slack. Hence, I'm extremely grateful for being able to work with Huiping & Isabel for peer teaching and the research proposal, as well as Qu Kui (for the research proposal). 

Thank you for the good times! 

                  

I really enjoyed Dr. Rhadika's style of teaching, which put me at ease, and I felt less afraid to speak up. To everyone, if I ended up bombarding your ears with opinions that competes with a puddle for shallowness, I apologize. >.< It has been really interesting to be in a class full of seniors, since seniors are supposed to be much more wiser in their thinking...right? That's an assumption that more years of learning will make one a wiser person. But it's true that I did learn a lot from my fellow classmates, from their insightful opinions.

For example, when commenting on someone's presentation, we should try to add in more positive comments. I'm sorry if I have been overly critical! I guess it's the same as writing a letter—sandwich style, where we buffer the bad news with the good news. To me, I feel that if it's something that's already rather good, and I have no suggestion on how to improve it, I wouldn't mention it. It's like a bad body gesture. The moment someone points it out, you become more conscious of it, which may bode well or not, depending on the individual.  

Moreover, I have finally managed to improve my presenting skills by maintaining eye contact with the audience and NOT holding my speech or notes! Neither have I memorized my speech word-for-word. I feel that I have improved drastically in that regard.

I'm not sure about the others, but I think we managed to bond rather fast in simply 1 semester. For my other classes, hardly any of us got to mix around with each other. I'm also glad that most of us seem to get along well with each other, without any classroom politics being involved. Or did I manage to run through this course oblivious to any arrows shot? :P The classroom atmosphere was lovely, since no one was jostling to comment and rapidly shooting their opinions, like the 'horror' stories usually told of arts modules that require class participation.

Thank you everyone for the laughter, the guidance and the fun! It has been a great learning experience.  

Reflection on Oral Presentation

One more hurdle—the oral presentation for our research proposal—OVER. :)

Preparation-wise...are we ever fully prepared for something? Everything can always be further refined. The more time we have, the more mistakes we spot. We might be even going around in circles trying to achieve perfection—something that is much beyond our abilities. However, as long as I have tried my best in preparing, I should be satisfied with my level of preparation. I can safely say I have tried my best in preparing for a presentation, given the short duration for preparation. In fact, I think this is the shortest time I've been given to prepare for a presentation? Usually my slots are positioned in the middle, so there's more time for me to prepare.

I felt that my delivery was rather...bad. Perhaps the volume of the voice was alright, but I could feel that what was spoken didn't flow very well at all. Well, in comparison to my peers.  

I feel that I could have presented my gestures in a more 'natural' way. Natural as in practiced to the point that it doesn't look too awkward or repetitive, like what I did for the presentation itself. The last time I presented, I gestured too much. Now, I tried restraining myself from showing too much gestures, but it didn't work out very well. Filming oneself and cringing at the footage would most likely banish the brain from engaging the audience with awkward gestures. 

I only recorded myself twice, and it wasn't that effective since I was reading verbatim directly from the paper, so I didn't look into the camera. Besides, there's only so many times one can practice speaking before the throat protests.

Though, my group members and I spent quite some time rehearsing everything and commenting on each other's delivery, so I was rather satisfied with that.  

I knew I was going to be somewhat fast for the first few slides, seeing that there were only 1-2 points per slide, but I'd rather have the points on separate slides rather than combining them together. Initially I tried combining some of the points together, but everything look so cluttered, so I decided to compromise on letting the audience view some of the points, than present messy slides. Hence, I should have organized my points in a better manner.

As we only have around 5 minutes of 'screen time', the medium of Powerpoint slides was chosen. I guess we are all used to using Powerpoint slides to convey our ideas to a crowd, rather than using a whiteboard to write out the points, or simply talking without any points to show the audience. One, it's easier and faster to present the ideas without having people to wait for you to finish writing on the whiteboard and risk turning your back on the audience. Furthermore, I feel that the method of simply talking without any points for the audience to look at will risk having the audience forgetting what you said earlier.


All in all, I think the overall presentation was done adequately well, all thanks to the feedback from everyone from previous sessions, the support from my fellow group mates Isabel, Huiping & Qu Kui and the effusive response from the audience during Q&A.