Critical Reflection

 Effective communication with Professor Blackstone has brought me upon a different light for the module, it is more than an English Language module for higher learning that majority presumed. At the beginning of the module, there are 2 goals and 1 weakness that I’ve highlighted in the introduction, aiming to improve on my verbal communication skills and professional writing skills while targeting on my weakness of self-confidence. With the numerous writings and edits throughout the module such as the self-introduction letter, reader’s response and technical report, my professional writing skills has improved with the constant feedbacks and assistance from Professor Blackstone and my classmates. The feedbacks have tackled mainly on the sentence structure, subject-verb agreement and fragments, enhancing my writings. Through the various set of instruction units and rotational seating arrangements, it has exposed to work with different group of people with distinctive personalities and work attitude. The teaching structure has also enhanced my presentation skills and boosted my confidence with various occasions of read aloud and sharing of the topic discussions. Over the weeks, I am exposed to a wide range of theorems and principles to shape my critical thinking. One of the biggest take-away is the “Reflection in real life”, it provides me with a guideline of the ideal, gap and goal, so that the structure of thoughts would revolve around the framework, avoiding any potential misdirection. The “Critical Reflection Process” by Natasha Kenny is the is another major gain, having more in-depth thoughts process for any applicable situation. For instance, our team has revolved the 2 processes mentioned at our initial planning stage, comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the various project ideas, and led down to the WeWalk smart cane due to its feasibility. The ideal, gap and goal has filtered the range of improvements idea we had for the smart cane while the Reflection Process has constantly reminded us on the significance, experience and contribution of the modification we proposed.

 

Through the project, critical thinking and reflection processes has been effectively utilized in the innovation process. As a presenter of the Men-In-Black, there are multiple opportunities for us to practice, accumulating from the weekly discussion to our mock presentation has greatly boosted our final presentation. With the detailed feedback by KFC, we have furnished our presentation structure with the aid of the 7C, bringing a more clarity, completeness with our improved cohesiveness. As for the final presentation, there were a few pauses and hesitation due to the unfamiliarity of slides, but I reckon I did manage to recover from it. Through all the presentation, I have improved on my self-confidence, and target to remain comfortable presenting to audience out of my comfort zone. As for the technical report, critical thinking and reflection has been highly utilized to create a filtration for our innovation. Furthermore, the report has enhanced with the appropriate in-text citation and references which was lacking back my previous reports. Throughout the project, we have faced some issues with the team dynamics in terms time management and of the different work ethics. To address these issues, timelines has been set and strictly abided by all members and effective communication within the group has improved the situation, meeting the deadline. Although this situation is inevitable in group projects but would be able to minimize the damage though effective communication within the members.  

 

Overall, this effective communication module has been enjoyable thanks to Professor Blackstone for creating such a positive learning environment. Deepest gratitude to the Professor Blackstone for the constant guidance and constructive feedbacks throughout the trimester as well. Cheers for more future opportunities!