Critical Reflection

 Module Learning:


At the beginning of the module I tasked myself to achieve the goal of becoming a better communicator and to effectively improve the usage of my words. Throughout this 13 week journey, I was able to learn and improve on my writing and communication skills especially with the guidance of Professor Brad. I feel that throughout this course I was able to effectively express myself and articulate my thoughts better. I was able to pick up skills that I had not learned and had almost no prior knowledge of such as technical writing, summarisation and citation skills. Prior to this effective communication class I lacked confidence and was able to improve my confidence through the pitches and presentations. I appreciated that Professor Brad gave us constant opportunities to try and learn from each other's mistakes through the peer reviews and pitches that we gave to our classmates. I also tried to learn more on the way others write their summaries and reports. During the lessons I challenged myself to reach out to others. For example, in the first assignment, I seeked out and started conversations with others. As it was the first trimester of my university life I wanted to make new friends and get to know my classmates better. Moreover, I am very grateful for this opportunity to brush up my communication skills and learn more during the effective communication classes eventually, applying these skills for my future presentations, reports and internships. 



Project Learning:


One major event that happened during my project was when we had to suddenly change our proposed idea. My team and I went into this pitch not prepared and our foundation of our idea was not strong. We decided to scrap the idea and research for another idea on the spot. At first we were at a loss and had no idea of how to continue. We as a team felt that we shouldn't let this incident affect us and we proceeded to scour the internet looking for ideas for our proposed idea. During that process, we were able to work together to find a solution together. We also helped each other with each others' parts and gave feedback in our technical reports by leaving comments and recommendations for each other. I realised that when working in a team it is important to have good communication between the members and have the same end goal in mind. We went into this report with a similar mindset of wanting to help each other and do well for our project. By giving each other feedback we were able to spot each other's mistakes and learned from them together. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Formal Letter (Descriptive Reflection)

Subject: Self Introduction Email Dear Prof Brad, I am writing this letter to you to introduce myself. My name is Ho Shimin, a year 1 Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering student at the Singapore Institute of Technology. I graduated from Temasek Polytechnic with a Diploma in Clean Energy. During my internship at the Land Transport Authority, I was attached to the bus infrastructure division. Where I was able to gain a deeper understanding of the infrastructure sector. It helped me gain a different perspective of the buildings and infrastructures that we have today. This piqued my interest in wanting to learn more and pursue a career in this industry. What I would like to gain from this effective communication class is to tackle my difficultly in conversing clearly and directly. Due to my lack of confidence, I tend to hesitate a lot and use “wimpy words” when speaking. Often, it becomes a problem as others have difficulties trying to decipher my words. For instance, during group
Read more

Annotated Summary

Doshi, T., D’Souza, N., Nguyen, P., Teo, H (August 2011). The Economics of Solar PV in Singapore. Energy Studies Institute. http://esi.nus.edu.sg/docs/event/the-economics-of-solar-pv_2011nov28_final.pdf The article focuses on the possibility of implementing solar panels into the rooftops of high rise residential buildings in Singapore. The author claims that due to Singapore’s lack of available land it would be more beneficial to install the solar panels on the rooftops of commercial, industrial, public sector residential buildings and private residential homes. According to the Singapore Land Authority, an estimated area of 6,337,360 m^2 to 7,779,890 m^2 of rooftop space would be available for the installation of solar panels and would bring about an estimated generation of 8.5 to 10.5% of Singapore’s total power capacity. This suggests that the installation of rooftop solar panels would be feasible. The article also provided useful information for our research project on the costs of
Read more

Assignment 2: Preventing 'Bus Bunching' with Smart Phone Application Implementation - Revised

In the article “Preventing ‘Bus Bunching’ with Smart Phone Application Implementation”, Sprogis (n.d.) claims that implementing a smartphone application for bus drivers will help shorten waiting times and prevent overcrowding. Sprogis analyses the data of bus crowds using AnyLogic's GIS features to create a solution called "Equilibrium" based on the distance between buses. By doing so buses will make refined adjustments to the route by altering its speed and maintaining the ideal headway. Sprogis (n.d.) believes that this helps to make the number of riders in each bus more consistent and develop more predictable waiting times, eventually “eliminating excessively long waiting times and dampens overcrowding of buses”. While I support the idea of tackling issues on bus bunching using smartphones, other technological applications have also successfully resolved bus bunching. Firstly, the usage of a smartphone application to tackle bus bunching has been successfully tested. In
Read more