Critical Reflection

At the beginning of the module, my goal was to become a better listener, ensure I give space to my teammates to share their thoughts fully and hoped to build my overall presentation skills. After progressing through the entire module, I was able to better understand how critical active listening was. 

Throughout this trimester, being exposed to a range of skills like writing presentations, really opened my horizons on how important effective communication is. Moreover, for someone who thought I had good writing skills, I became aware that there was so much room for improvement. The module offered plenty of resources, especially the sample examples and the instructional units which were very detailed, providing a clear overview on what were the requirements of the module and what was to be achieved by the end of it.  As the lessons progressed, I learnt more and realized how the resources for this module helped my other modules. For example, the previous trimester, when submitting reports and written documents, I've always felt like it was not professional enough and as I got to learn about things like APA styling, the correct use of structures, I applied these into my report submission and was able to attain the neat and professional document that I have always lacked, where I was actually impressed by my improvement in my quality of work.  

One main thing I learnt throughout the period of our research project was how much of a crucial role communication plays in building teamwork. After our first group session, I realised that all of us were introverts which made it difficult to communicate properly. Moreover during team discussions there were things like lack of uncertainty in task distributions and hesitation in sharing our thoughts with each other. To address the issue, after every lesson we had a small debrief session on what each of us could do and discuss about the things that had to be completed. Through this experience, I learnt that you do not have to be an extrovert to communicate during group projects and small things such as actively listening and taking note of what our teammates say is important. All in all my teammates made me realise how much of a huge difference active listening can actually make. Moving forward, I’d like to be even more proactive and make sure that everyone feels included.