At the beginning of this module,
I set the goal for myself to polish my technical writing skills and cultivate
the habit of spotting mistake in all my work. After 13 weeks of tutelage under
Professor Brad and the help of my peers, I feel that I have achieved what I set
out to do and learnt numerous applicable communications skills that can be
extremely useful in my final year project or in fact, any required information
that needs to be properly translated in a form of reports or presentations. I
feel that the module was very well paced and throughout each assignment, there
was ample guidance and feedback that allowed me to understand and internalise
my mistakes and areas of improvements. The feedback methodology used during
this module was crafted in a remarkable convention, which allowed the students
to help critique their peers work. This forces us to automatically self-reflect
on our work and think about any oversights we might have missed out. One area
of improvement I may highlight is the emphasise on meeting minutes. I felt that
even though it was briefly touched on during the class, more emphasise could be
put onto it as minutes writing will be a very important skillset when we enter
the workforce, not only to write them but to know how to vet and approve them
as well.
During this module, the final group
assignment was to select a product to research on and propose improvements/modifications
in the form of a proposal report and present our ideas to the cohort. Our group
decided to build on a previous assignment idea – the Seabin. During this
project, even though our team had one less member as compared to other teams,
with the right delegation of work load, we were able to complete the assignment
smoothly and properly. The constant meet ups and dedicated team discussion time
allocated during class helped ensure the individual portions integrate well with
one another and in turn, maintain a good “flow” within the report. We also had well
formulated sessions during class to help condition us to speaking in front of a
crowd. From pitching to a buddy, having a mock presentation to a small group
and finally the presentation to the class. This helped me to foster up more
courage each time I overcome a small hurdle and slowly be more comfortable with
public speaking.
Overall, I feel that I have greatly
benefited from the group project assignment and the module. As compared to
other similar modules like “GenEd” in polytechnic, the modus operandi of this
module allowed for much better learning and takeaways. It was a pleasure to attend
this module and I hope to be able to have the privilege to learn from Professor
Brad again.
