Final Reflection on Learning

After an arduous 13 weeks, we’ve finally come to the end of the module. Though the journey has been tough and demanding with all the class works and assignments etc, I could safely say it has taught me many things; things not only pertaining to effective communication but also life skills like dealing with stress and managing expectations, both of mine and of others.

One of the more memorable event during the course of this module is in working on the research proposal, from the proposal brief, survey all the way to the oral presentation. Forming the ideas and content for the proposal was easy, however the challenge comes in trying to narrow down the scope and making the idea concrete and precise which took a lot of effort in thinking and discussing amongst my group. Luckily, we had other groups to evaluate and comment on our proposal which provided the means and ideas to refine our proposal and also to make it clearer and more concise when we finally handed it in. This taught me the importance of listening to opinions and feedbacks outside your working sphere as most of the time as a group we are too deep inside our ideas that so much so we are unable to see the loopholes that other people outside will see. To those of the other groups reading this, thanks for your invaluable feedbacks =).

Another lesson I learn during the course of this project is in knowing my own group members, knowing their strengths and their weaknesses and in turn giving them tasks that they are more suited to do. For Xin Ying, even though she is chinese educated and her command of the english language is not that strong, she is very meticulous in her work and being a biology student she has handled countless biodata and statistics before. Therefore, assigning her the role of compiling survey and interview results (and making sense of them) and basically almost all the administration of the team would utilize her gift to the full. Li Xian, like xinying, also had difficulties in the english language, but being an engineer she possess very good analytical and critical thinking skills, thus assigning her to do the benefits section of our proposal would be a wise choice. As for zhao chen, being a budding businessman, and possessing analytical skills, we assigned him to do the cost analysis for the team as he is suited to do the cost and risk assessment.

 

Reflection on Oral Presentation

Being naturally introverted, public speaking is not something which comes to me easily. Hence, the oral presentation component for this ES2007S module was a big challenge for me personally.

One step that was helpful in helping me prepare for the oral presentation was to write down the relevant and concise points I wanted to present and share with my audience in the short 5mins (10 mins for me actually since I handled 2 parts, namely the introduction and the closing) before creating the relevant slides and visuals. This helps in the organization of thoughts. To aid in my preparation for the presentation, I watched youtube videos of Steve Job’s keynote presentations to learn and pick up a few pointers from the master. One important video is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-ntLGOyHw4 on which I form the basis of my presentation. I prepared my presentation in such a way that there is only one main idea/theme for each part that I presented. The introduction focus is on the current entertainment climate in NUS whilst the closing focuses on convincing the audience that the ideas my team presented will work.

In my powerpoint slides, I strive to use as little words as possible so that it will be visually appealing (not cluttered) but still able to make an impact, e.g. “Awesome stress reliever!!”. I use pictures to complement words so that the audience will be able to grasp what I’m trying to explain to them (tv, music, sports) and also some of the pictures for humor purposes (the dog with the incredulous expression, guy with folded arms etc). I also use numbers and data to persuade my audience to be agreeable to my idea (the population in NUS = potential revenue example).

In terms of delivery, besides the usual nonverbal communication like straight posture, hand gestures etc, I strive to engage my audience by having them participate in a poll, and to ask them questions to bring forth my point. One mistake I found I made was that I should have emphasize and clarify the point I was making after asking Jun Wen does being in CCA make him stress, instead of jumping on to the next segment of the presentation. Other delivery skills I tried was to use words that would show enthusiasm so that I could get my audience excited about what I was about to share, words like “exciting!” “awesome!” “innovative!” for example.

The “Oh and one more thing….” when I closed was directly inspired by Steve Job’s presentation to help in building an exciting atmosphere so as to leave my audience with a memorable impression of the presentation. Though my main regret is that I got totally anxious when playing the saxophone and hence did not go as smooth as I intended it to be, but I am satisfied as it did accomplish it’s purpose in leaving a lasting and memorable experience in my audience during the presentation.