The effective communication module was a great learning experience. During the biweekly lessons with Prof Brad, we slowly covered all the things that we are supposed to cover during this module even though it was quite a rush to cover all topics. However, I felt that I did learn many things from both Prof Brad and my classmates as well when we are doing in-class assignments as well as project work.
Before this module, my goal is to be able to improve and be more confident during presentations as well as to be able to improve my writing skills. Through this entire module, I learned many things to improve both my presentation and writing skills. An example would be that after we write a report, we would be able to get feedback from our classmates as well as Prof. This really helps me to improve my writing as I would get more feedback and different views from others. With the feedback, I am able to find out my mistakes and correct them to make my reports and assignments better than before. For speaking, I felt that the mock presentation does help me to gain some confidence. However, I am still unable to improve my nervousness when I stand in front of a larger crowd like in front of the whole class. Standing in front of about half of the class, I didn’t feel as nervous as I was when I am in front of the whole class. For this part, I feel that I will need to improve more and be more confident.
In terms of the project learning experience, working as a group isn’t easy as we are all from different schools and from different backgrounds. Our working style is different, some work better late into the night and some are more active in the morning. During discussions, sometimes we might not be able to come to an agreement as we might have different thoughts and knowledge on the particular topic. This causes some disagreements and confusion sometimes. There are times when there are a lot of things on hand and we have different priorities on which project we should do first. This is also an issue that arises when we are doing this project. However, in the end, we manage to finish our project and time and also did the project well. This project work taught me to be more open-minded and be more understanding of my group mates as we all have different working styles from one another. With good understanding and communications within the group, we are able to do well for both our report and presentation. Even though there are ups and downs during the group project, it was a good experience learning from each other. Be it a good thing or a bad thing, I definitely learn if am I able to work with the group member or not. With the experience of changing groups almost weekly by Prof, it helps me to understand more about who I can work better with and who have the same working style as me. This will definitely aid me in forming my groups for future projects.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time during this module biweekly and I learned more about myself. I also did improve myself during the whole process of this module and found some great friends along the way. I hope that I can continue to hold on to the things I have learned from this module and transfer it to my other reports in the future.
