Critical Response

"Improve my confidence in speaking" and "sharpen my critical thinking" were my initial goals for this UCS module. 

Over the 13 weeks of UCS, I have built up my report writing and presentation skills. 

There are 2 key events that happened that I would like to write about. 

The first event was the pitch between the groups about the project we are working on. On that day, I remember talking about the pitch while referring heavily to my phone. It felt really unprofessional of me, given that I am the group leader of the team and should have full command of what my team was working on. As questions were asked by other teams, I answered the questions with minimal information. The presentation went quite badly for me. 

After the group pitches, I decided to take more time to look up nanobubbles technology and to better understand the project that I am working on (as I had minimal understanding of the topic). After spending more time understanding the technology, together with an on-site visit at Mazak, I had a far better understanding of what I was working on. Based on the discussions I had with the team, I was then able to come up with the proposed solution. If I chose not to do more research and understand the topic I was working on, I would not have been able to contribute to the team effectively. Additionally, as I understood more about the topic, I was able to explain the proposed solution better and was able to have a good final presentation (as I knew what I was speaking about (and also that we had multiple rehearsals before the presentation day)). 

I understood the importance of taking more time to understand the process. I knew that I had minimal knowledge about the topic and chose to brush up on it. This allowed me to build up my confidence in speaking in front of the class at the end. I grew up trying to memorize the script or just reading from my script (hiding behind the phone/paper) for my presentations. After this UCS module, I have learnt more about my presentation style and understand now to own what I present (to fully understand the knowledge I was presenting). 

The second key event would be the consultation with professor Brad about our report. Throughout the whole process of report writing, I was so confused about how to write what I was supposed to write. I had already done the research and written a few paragraphs. During the consultation, we were told that our background was lacking and that the components mentioned in the proposed solution should be front-loaded. The whole process of coming up with the problem and purpose statement took the team a long time as the team was not sure if it was right or wrong. The draft that we showed to professor Brad was also missing the APA citations for the figures. Paragraphs were also missing to describe certain titles. 

We had meetings to further discuss everyone's roles and to check up on the progress of the report ( organize meetings for the team). I had created a list of content that we had to fix for the report (in addition to the notes that everyone else had taken during the consultation). 

We managed to fix most of the issues with the report by now as we had a clearer picture of what we were writing for the report. 

I understood that to be clearer about the understanding behind the instructions and teaching. As the team leader, it was important to know what the team needed to work on and lead the team in the right direction. In the future, I will focus on what the team needs and seek clarification in class should I be unsure. 

I would say that over the past 13 weeks I have learnt a lot more about how to improve not just my communication skills, but also how to think more critically. 

Thank you, Professor Brad, for teaching me over these 13 weeks!