Critical Reflection

 For this effective communication module, I wanted to achieve some goals that I set. My first goal was to learn structural and mental preparation for public speaking. My second goal was to get confidence in speaking out and have an interactive presentation with the audience. For presentation preparation, I had difficulty preparing fully to present smoothly with confidence. Throughout this module, I had many opportunities to speak out in front of my classmates. These opportunities made me get used to the environment. It mentally helped me in being less nervous during presentations and in getting some confidence in speaking out. Gaining confidence in speaking out in front of people is not only about getting used to public speaking. I learned how to structure myself what is my opinion and how I want to express it to people. It well prepared me to be confident in the content that I will be speaking. Moreover, I also prepared a script, but I tried not to memorize the script in case of forgetting what to say and giving a long pause during the presentation. Instead of memorizing the script, I chose to understand what I am presenting with details. I could use the 7Cs of Communication which required me to think about “what, who, why, and how” in various directions such as conciseness and clarity. Through this exercise, I managed to understand and not rely too much on the script during the presentation. However, I still need to learn how to be interactive with the audience. I was used to focus on my presentation while still having small eye contact and using some gestures, but I feel that it can be improved in the future as I believe that there will be always opportunities to stand in front of people other than in this module. I will need to come out with some rhetorical questions and make more eye contact with the audience to engage more.

For my project, I decided to focus on firefighting drone design. I thought that this is just a normal research project. However, throughout the module, I learned what is the proper way of researching and supporting my opinion. Firstly, I had to understand what are the key focus that I need to research. The main focuses were the battery and the armor of the drone. There are a lot of research ways such as primary research like an interview and secondary research like Google Scholar. These research methods were useful to support my project as it is a solid resource that has valid credit. Also, as I came out with a problem statement that has ideal, gap, and solution, it can provide the rough flow of the research contents and project overview to guide me. During the report writing, I had to use the APA form every time, I could practice how to put references and in-text citations based on APA format. I believe that it will definitely help me in the future since I realized that there are different formats to be used in different reports or depending on the boss or reader. Moreover, based on the Pyramid principle, I could structure the presentation slides smoothly starting from the main point followed by insights and supporting evidence. Throughout the project, my teammates guided me a lot of times. Different people have different perspectives, and they can see the same thing from different angles. So, the feedback from teammates can be different and useful in different ways. For example, during presentation rehearsal, as each other will give informal feedback to improve on, we could adjust some points and structures to achieve a high-quality presentation. I could learn from the detailed feedback that I got from teammates as they could point out my mistakes and any improvements. It was a good experience that I could learn a lot of things about projects, reports as well as teamwork. I would like to thank my groupmates for guiding each other and putting so much effort to perform very well.

Throughout this module, I have learned a lot of techniques for critical thinking and communication skills. Based on what I have learned so far in this module, I could be more confident and well-spoken. Also, whenever I do projects or any research work, I will use and refer to journal articles and critical thinking techniques. I would like to thank Professor Brad for teaching me and putting a lot of effort into having memorable lectures.