Final Reflection on Learning

As I rewind back to the first session of this module, I recalled how uncomfortable I felt on speaking out. It is not in my nature to be vocal and expressive of my thoughts and opinions as I always felt that someone is going to be hurt out of this exercise. Then, as we went along, I started to realize that communication can take many forms. It is important for you to package your thoughts and organize your words in a way that it minimizes any ill-feelings and to maximize the impact of your intent out of the process. This is especially important for presentations as you know who your audience are and what you intend to convey out of the presentation.

Lessons and feedback from Peer Teaching session were personally very useful in my group’s preparation for the oral presentation. Over the course of this module, I’ve learnt through our class sessions, numerous articles and videos on presentation skills and its techniques. It is not possible to apply all of them but after the Peer Teaching session, I realized that an effective and good presentation can be achieved on the condition of these few preparations which I will hopefully hold on to. They are:

1.      To master your materials.

2.      To have very focused slides with minimal words but with more visual representation.  

3.      Most importantly, to rehearse. Rehearsal will synchronize your words and your slides, get the train of thoughts correct to minimize reliance on script and finally, to overcome a fair bit of nervousness during presentation.

With this in mind, I tried my best to work on my oral presentation. My initial reliance on script during the rehearsal suddenly could be done away with except at key junctures during the presentation. I surprised myself as the flow of ideas eased my speech and it was even better as it sounded more natural.

With regards to the non-verbal aspect of my presentation, I think I still felt a little stiff. I guess it will come naturally with more practice through proper use of gestures during my conversations. It will take time and effort as it will require me to be continuously conscious of my hands and facial expressions while speaking.

To conclude, I am personally satisfied with my personal development over the course of this module, in particular with regards to my presentation skills. While there are definitely rooms for improvement, this module have provided the stepping stone for me to be aware and conscious on the way I speak and deliver material in the best way possible.

Reflection on Oral Presentation

Just the thought of having to do a presentation is enough to bring down my spirits as I am not a natural public speaker. Nevertheless, I had to remind myself that this is the exact reason as to why I took up this module and if I’m going to at least overcome this weakness, it might as well be now.

Fortunately, I had a wonderful group who complemented each other very well. Abdurrahiem was there to polish up the softer side of our presentation while Sudarsan was there to beef up on our content coverage. We worked hard on our report; hence the content aspect of our presentation was in a way quite comfortable as we knew our scope of coverage rather well and I believed, that is our main strength during the oral presentation. From the peer teaching session, Abdurrahiem always pushed us to have more pictures and I thought that was a wonderful and effective way to relay your ideas. Thus, it was left to us to rehearse as a group to work on our speech and a seamless transition between speakers. This was done by practicing in a classroom to simulate our presentation. Our efforts paid off with a presentation that was smooth-sailing in general. Nonetheless, on an individual level, we could have done better with our speeches. This has partly got to do with our rather delayed preparation of slides and consequently limited time to work on our speeches.  

While we faced an onslaught of questions from the class, it was more of a clarification of the rather complex system proposed although a few do have their share of skepticism. However, we managed to give them a satisfying answer with the substantial information we have gathered.

In conclusion, I believed our oral presentation fulfilled the criteria for the effective communication of our proposal and that boils down a lot to our tireless work as a group in both content and mental preparation. It has taught us to prepare the presentation with the audience in mind and definitely imparted the fact that preparation can be done well with thorough preparatory work.