Critical Reflection

In this trimester, we learnt about various critical thinking and communication skills. My goal at the start of the module was to be able to adapt different communication style with the change of audience and be able to construct my sentences in a clear and concise manner. However, the first goal was not achieved. I did not make good use of the time to prepare for the presentation which caused me to heavily rely on the script which was not a good thing. During the presentation of the research project, instead of presenting in a formal manner, my presentation was rather casual. The target audience was neglected when the script was written. The concepts were learnt during lessons but more effort needs to apply it during presentation. The second goal was achieved through report writings, design summary and reader's response. Feedbacks are given to help me understand what went wrong and how sentences could be improved. Through this module, I learnt about the Do's and Don'ts of a professional email. A professional email is required throughout my university life and in my future workplace. Professional emails can be the first impression others have of me. Therefore, it is critical to write it with a decent format. The writing of a design summary and providing a reader's response based on the summary has helped me to apply critical thinking skills with the help of guided questions, frameworks as well as examples to better understand the objective of the task. Through the lessons, I was able to generate a decent thesis for my assignment. The feedback given by Prof. Brad is also beneficial for my learning as he identifies the areas I need to improve on which is the argumentations in my readers response. 

For the research project done on Astrobee, I was grouped with Timothy and Colin. I was very unsure of what should be done for the project but with the help of my teammates I was able to understand what was required of the report. For the presentation, I was struggling to present due to various reasons like stage fright and unprepared. Even though in class we learnt about what should be done and what should not, it was not applied to my presentation mainly because I was too nervous. I learnt that to be more prepared for my presentation, I can try to rehearse in front of the mirror a few times to be more confident when presenting. I should also keep in mind who is the target audience for the presentation so that I can address them in proper. This communication has taught me a lot. What is left for me to do is to apply it to my future presentations and report writings.

On a side note, Thank you Brad. :) It was a pleasure to attend your classes.