Monday, November 15, 2010

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!!

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

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.