Reflection

At the start of the course, I wanted to come out of this module with a better command of English and communication skills (especially presentation skills), as I do not really have a knack for presentation. Back in polytechnic, at least for my course, we were not critically evaluated for presentations, so I never really had a chance to go through a proper presentation or properly prepare for one. For almost all my presentations back then, I made sure I had my script in hand and presented every word I had typed out on my script when I presented. Most of the time, I would just slap on any pictures I thought was relevant without citations and write out most of the points I had to say. However, after going through this module, I have learnt that there is so much more to presentations then that. As I went through my first presentation in UCS, I tried my very best to present without a script while being engaging at the same time. When doing research, I made sure that I properly credited the person’s work through citations. I have also learnt the skill of summarizing which is not equivalent to paraphrasing. I also had the pleasure of working in a team and carefully developing a problem and purpose statement through figuring out the ideal, gap and goal of the topic we were studying. I believe that all these skills can be applied in future presentations and assignments, and I hope to slowly improve myself as I gain more experience.

During the research project, I was able to enhance my research, teamwork, and presentation skills. While researching together with my groupmates, we would ensure that the work we referenced from were from a credible source and that we credited them correctly. My team and I had a problem with citation. We then chose to get help from friends of the other groups to advise us on citations.  At one point in time, we hit a snag where we were not able to generate enough content for the solution of our report. For our presentation slides, we wrote down our own points for presenting then we cross checked each other’s content. We ensured that we had no error in our parallel structure for slides and decided whether the content such as pictures or points on each slide was relevant. Most of the time, we had the mindset of presenting what we had on our report. However, we realized after given some feedback that our presentation was more of a pitch than presenting a report. We then switched out presentation titles, content, and speech delivery as we would want to be able to relate more to the stakeholders. My takeaway from this project would be that communication is more than just speaking but knowing how to communicate effectively, be it through text or speech.