Critical Reflection

Effective communication was the module that I felt encouraged improvement and learning the most this semester. Being a non-engineering module it was a relief from the torrent of formulas and figures. However, that was only after overcoming the initial process of picking up new skills such as critical thinking, technical report writing and presentation skills. Initially, when I wrote my formal letter, I had intended to improve my critical thinking and impromptu speeches. In retrospect, I would like to believe that I have managed to make some improvements in both areas.

This module has given me plenty of opportunities to do impromptu speeches throughout these thirteen weeks and while I am nowhere near perfect, I have been able to organise my thoughts better. Till this module, I have never gotten feedback that I tend to speak too quickly, and this might have been due to the fact that my polytechnic lecturers simply wanted the presentations to end quicker. Sorry if that sounded facetious, but I do truly believe that having peer reviews was the cornerstone of this module. By reviewing others, you gain an understanding of the marking process and being reviewed gives you an insight into how others perceive your work. This made me realise my glaring weaknesses when it came to my presentation skills. Thus, I now have a new goal to work towards in my future presentations.

My journey to improve my critical thinking on the other hand was not as fruitful. Throughout the thirteen weeks, I had difficulty using the entire Paul-Elder framework, as recalling it was problematic for me. Instead, I decided to stick to the intellectual standards which have proven beneficial for me when typing out reports.

The team project was a rather mixed bag of feelings for me. As an editor, I realise that without sufficient communication there are cases where we would repeat the same points as we typed our parts individually. Despite our lack of communication, we managed to maintain a consistent message throughout the report. I attribute this to the zoom calls we had occasionally to ensure that everyone is on the same page and to check our individual progress. Since we could read what the other members typed out before typing our own part, we ended up not only maintaining the same message but also the same mistakes and phrases. This led me to believe that reading each other’s work can easily influence our own style of writing. Therefore, for such situations in the future having a good model to work from is key.

During most of our discussions, we rarely had differing opinions within the team. This became more apparent as we went further along with our project. As we spent every week discussing the project and doing the same research, we eventually started to have the same image of what our report was about. 

However, having good teamwork does not necessarily mean that the product of such a team will be great. Having a team that was receptive meant that we rarely had conflicting views on ideas. An idea that is not challenged cannot be improved or complete. While I do believe in the quality of the report my team has written, I am curious as to what road the project would have travelled had there been one member that liked to dispute things. Would that lack of harmony make it harder to work towards a shared goal?