Reflections on Module

So in a breeze, 13 weeks have come and gone. And soon it will be the last day of school. Have I learnt anything? Perhaps. I think resume writing and interview skills would come in very handy in the future. Also, the lessons learnt from preparing a proposal, making oral presentations are also important. I think I have caught a small glimmer of what the working world is like.

There are certainly things I disagree with. Communication is important yes, but can it be taught? In essence, is it nature or nurture? Maybe a bit of both. From what I've learnt, things like cover letters, resume templates, minutes templates, these can easily be found from the net. But the practical aspects, I believe cannot be taught. Rather these can only be experienced, and learnt from there. Thus, this module achieves its purpose in allowing students to have that experience, from Alvin's blog, I think he brought up a good suggestion. That is to have more "mini-presentations" rather than one large one. It could be a better gauge to see if pupils actually have learnt anything when comparing to how they were at the start to how they end up finally.

At the start of the module, I stated that communication makes us human. Now at the end, I'd like to go back to that. The opposite must be true as well, to be human is to communicate. To communicate effectively, first let us be effective humans. Throughout the module there has been a lot of talk of being natural. We already realise that "naturalness" helps us to connect better with our audience. But to learn how to be natural? To act natural? These are really just oxymorons isn't it. You can't teach the things which make us human, this is the nature aspect.

I enjoyed this class, I really did. Rarely in college does one get to have so much interpersonal interactions during class. And I think this is one aspect of this module which makes it so interesting. Good luck to all for the upcoming examinations!

Reflections on Oral Presentation

With the semester coming to a close, we find that the last major project of ES2007S is finally over. Looking back, we can now take a deep sigh of relief and laugh at our former selves. As they say, hindsight is 20/20.*

I will not talk too much about our project content, suffice to say that it took many redos, editting the problem statement over and over again. Presentation wise, if I had to do it again, I would make minor edits to my slides. Some information which was not needed should have been omitted. I think I made the mistake of tailoring my speech to fit the slides rather than the slides to fit my speech. After all, the slides are merely an aid. Less informative slides would have been better. Otherwise, I should have highlighted the important terms in red to make them stand out better. Admittedly, there wasn't much time. Slides were still being editted the night before, and even the speech was constantly changing.

If I could, I would have slowed down the pace of my speech. The terrifying thing about presenting under a time limit is when you don't have any indication of how much time you have left. I think I ended up speaking faster than I should have had I known that there was still some time left.

As for nonverbals, as far as it goes, eye contact is important. Something all of us know, but none can actually pull off (with the exception of a select few). Also, perhaps standing nearer the class might have helped hold their focus. Also, I noticed that many presenters liked to present while standing behind a table/support of some kind. Perhaps it might make one feel less vulnerable, but at the same time it makes the presenter come across as less open. I'm not sure about this, what do you think?

After all is said and done, oral presentation, was, as usual, nervewrecking, and I hope never to do it again. Yet we all know that is wishful thinking.

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*

Perfect understanding of an event after it has happened; - a term usually used with sarcasm in response to criticism of one's decision, implying that the critic is unfairly judging the wisdom of the decision in light of information that was not available when the decision was made.