Critical Reflection

Module Learning

At the start of the course, we were tasked to write up a descriptive reflection where I set my goals for the course to be improvement in two-way communication and writing skills with regards to tone and phrasing. 

What impacted me the most was the Paul-Elder Framework where it educate me on the standards I should adopt when portraying an idea or even when working in a team. In this case, I usually will ask myself these questions for example: Do I have Intellectual Empathy? Am I having prejudice towards the idea or even the person that's why I am disagreeing with their viewpoint? Am I listening and understanding to my group mates' point of view and sharing? By thinking before I act out, I am able to clearly and accurately illustrate the idea I am sharing and also this gives time for my team mates to share their ideas too. This ticks the checkbox for the portion of wanting to improve my two-way communication skills because I give my team mates opportunities to share and understand from their point of view. 

Another process which I benefitted a lot from this course is the Rodger's Reflective cycle. It allows me to think from a broader perspective because I can learn from my experience and analysis on a better method to improve the whole process. I applied this process onto my Summary Reader Response as we were instructed to upload our drafts onto our blog and through the gathering of feedbacks, I start to reflect and make changes to my work. This definitely improved my writing skills. 

To further better communication and writing, I feel that I need to continue to have intellectual humility when learning and not forger what I have learnt from this course. 

Project Learning

One of the focus for my research project would be on writing skills. The reason why I emphasised the most on my writing skills is because I am rather weak on my accuracy in my phrasing and tone. Through the peer review and submission of my reports, I've learnt how to take in constructive feedbacks and how to further improve my writing skills by applying the Rodger's Reflective cycle. 

From the countless lessons on writing reports, I am educated on the APA styles for paraphrasing, references and for figures. I start questioning myself on: Am I clearly referencing the websites for the data/ information they are providing? Is my report reliable because I am referencing from the right and reliable source? Is my source reliable? Am I quoting the source when I using word for word? By questioning myself logically using critical thinking, my analysation skills for my research heighten. 

What's more, I know that through the identification of who the report is for and what the report is about, we can then assume how much background information the target audience has and how much relevant and "catered" information do we write within the report. By catered means how inclined is the report towards the target audience, how much they would benefit and how much they want to hear this report would "help" them. 

I also learnt about the format of how a report to a client would work, this certainly improves my writing skills in terms of the tone and phrasing as I will have to be more professional and formal when writing an official report and transmittal letter to a client asking for approval for the procession of the project.