Reflections!

Through this enriching communication module, I have learned the importance of effective communication. In my first blog post, I mentioned that effective communication skills allow efficient sharing of ideas and thus, hasten the completion of a group project. I manage to see the efficacy of effective communication during the various ES2007s group project meetings. For instance, I find it difficult to truly understand the views of my group members if all of us are talking at the same time. This situation is evident during the several phone conferencing that I had with Dinesh and Terence. Through these meetings, I learn to be an active listener and to evaluate every suggestion given by my group members critically.

This course also provides me a valuable learning experience to practice my presentation and interviewing skills. After going through the mock interview and the group presentation, I realized that I have lot of room for improvement in these aspects. My performance paled in comparison with that of my other course-mates. During both occasions, I felt rather uneasy and nervous speaking to my other course-mates. I definitely need more practice in order to shake off my stage fright and uneasiness during a presentation.

Besides, this module also teaches me how to write a persuasive resume and job application letter. In addition, the preparation of these materials allows me to evaluate my strengths and weaknesses and also enable me to search for a job that I desire. Futhermore, this course provides me a fulfilling blogging experience. Prior to this course, I set up a blog to record my daily experience in Stockholm,Sweden. However, my interest died off after several blog post as I did not receive many comments. I had the impression that my friends back in Singapore were not reading my blog entries. In contrast, for this Es2007s blog, I received a fair amount of constructive feedbacks from Brad and my Blogging group members. This had motivated me to comment regularly on my blogging group members' blog posts.

Lastly, I would like to thank my course tutor, Brad, and my other beloved course-mates who had made this course so interactive, enriching and enlightening to me. All the best to everyone reading this blog post!

My Oral Presentation

I really struggled during the presentation of my slides today. Seeing the excellent performance of the other two groups, I felt really nervous and worried for my presentation. During my presentation, I had difficulties expressing my thoughts and I missed out quite a bit of points. Some of the sentences that I would like to say include “Our group had used information from ICCS homepage in the formulation of our survey questions and also in the analysis of the survey question.” and “Our group felt that it is quite imperative to inform the public about the current beach conditions and also educate them about the negative impact that beach litters pose on us and our environment.” As a result, I felt that my presentation was quite incomplete. Also, I went through my slides pretty fast. This was probably due to my innate reflex when I had nothing more to describe. I should have taken a few seconds to gather my thoughts instead of just rushing through my presentation. I am not really sure whether my disappointing presentation got anything to do with my preparative work- writing down what I want to say and memorizing them. Perhaps, my stream of thoughts was affected by my four hours of sleep this morning. Anyway, I shall end with the video which we did not have the chance to show during our presentation.