Final Reflection

The learning journey through ES2007S has been so enjoyable that I didn’t even feel time passing by. As a freshie, I really learned something which can benefit me in the following university life.
Something new
The most important skill I learned in this course is presentation skill. What I used to do is to present all the methodology, primary and secondary research. However, I learned from this course that we need to “sell” our ideas to the audience instead of talking too much on the work we do.

Also, I used to present things like I am reading a report. What I learned from this course is that presenting is more about the presenter than the slides. I should use more vivid examples or stories to engage the audience instead of delivering a lecture.

Suffering but happy
Blogging is a new and interesting topic for me. Actually, I felt a bit disappointed when I heard that we had to write our posts in a very formal way. To be honest, I do not like writing but I know that blogging will benefit me so I try my best to do it.

Afterwards I realized that the most suffering part is not writing the post but the commenting part. I had to comment meeting a certain standard. Sometimes, I really had to get all my brain cells to work but I really learned a lot during the process. I learned how to point out one’s weakness and strength. I felt very happy when I finished them.

I really hope that this course can last for longer time so that I can learn more and meet my friends more. I want to say a big thank you to Brad and everyone in this class. Your encouragement and our friendship have made this course an unforgettable experience for me!!

Oral Presentation Reflection

Firstly, I want to thank my group members: Nan, Hau and Edmund for their contribution to this project. They really helped me a lot and I also have learnt a lot from them. In fact, I used to work on the slides a lot. I often try to put a lot of information on the slides and I haven’t realized that the presentation is about the presenters until I take this course. Also, for the same slide, different ways of delivering can cause different impact. For example, I talked about one slide about the estimated cost of the second solution. In my preparation, I just said that “the cost is… and we only need to recruit 5 more students per year…”. However, Edmund told me it would be better if we say “the cost is… ” and then ask the audience “is it a large sum of money? Nope, actually we can make up from…” I was very impressed by that point.

Anyway, I have to talk about my oral presentation today. In our discussion, we agree to make our slides as few as possible and use more pictures to emphasize our points. So I use many pictures without many words, like the old schedule, the changed schedule and busy YIH canteen. However, I feel that the transition of my slides is not well done. I also think the link between my slides and my speech is not highly connected. (Maybe it is because of my mistake during the presentation).

For the delivery part, I think the mistake during my presentation really affected me a lot. I was supposed to answer Hau’s question and walked to the stage slowly and confidently. However, it turned out to be that I walked to the stage frightenedly. I prepared a lot but it still happened, out of my expectation of course. In fact, I didn’t know what my gestures were because I was very nervous. However, I tried to keep eye contact with the audience after I remembered everything. I didn’t know whether it was effective or not because maybe I looked really stressed and my eye contact were no longer there.

I hope my mistake didn’t affect my group’s presentation too much. I wanted to say that I should have remembered the main points instead of the script and I will try my best to do it next time.