Critical Reflection

Module Learning

Coming to an end of the trimester also means the end of the effective communication module. Reflecting back to week one, where I had first begun to work on my goal for this module, I had my goals set to refine my skills in public speaking and to improve my technical writing skills. After attending the effective communication module, I believe that I have significantly improved in both my communication and writing skills. I was able to do so through the course resources provided to us. I was able to broaden my communication and writing skills through the projects assigned to us. Projects and report writing has allowed me to broaden my perspective through the discussion done with my team members. Through this, I was able to look at different problems through my team member’s perspective. I believe that learning this skill would greatly benefit me as I would be able to see problems from various angles when I face them in the future.

Project Learning 

After attending the effective communication module, I learned that communication within a team and teamwork is essential in any group project. The groups that were allocated in this module ware at random, this brings people of different backgrounds together to work together towards a common goal. In this situation, there’s always advantages and disadvantages. The advantage towards randomized groups would be to meet new people and form strong friendships with them. The disadvantages towards randomized groups would be clashing of ideas from team members. Each member has their own visualization and thoughts towards the same problem. This has taught me to pause for a moment to analyse the perspective my team member is coming from. For instance, during my team’s research phase, we were discussing if we should use anaerobic digestion or pyrolysis for our team’s solution. We were given a few days to do research on the given topics by our team leader and were to debate about it in the next meeting. During the meeting, we mentioned about the advantage and disadvantage of both processes. I was supporting the use of pyrolysis and was trying to persuade my team members to use it. However, after hearing what my team members had to say about the processes, I realized that pyrolysis has too many factors and technical terms to consider within our 2000 words report. In the end, our team agreed on anaerobic digestion for our solution. I believe that learning the importance of communication and teamwork will benefit me greatly in the future. I will meet different people from different backgrounds in the future, I have to learn to work with them for future projects and I’m sure with skills I obtain from this module, I’ll be more prepared. In conclusion, I believe that communication is the key to every successful project. Without proper communication and the correct way to express my ideas, there would not even be a team, without a team, there would not be a successful team project.

Thank you, Professor Brad Blackstone, for guiding us through this fun and enriching journey. I’ve greatly benefited from this module and I’m sure my fellow course mates have done so too.

VodCast