Looking back, the beauty of this module
is the opportunity to practice what we have learnt. One of the most important aspects
of effective communication is to be aware of the feedback from the receiver when
communicating. Both the peer teaching exercise and the oral presentation
provided a platform for me to practice this aspect as I am “forced” to maintain eye
contact with the audience while presenting. (I tend to read off my slides during previous presentations) It is fascinating to discover how by observing the
audience’s body language/facial expression, I am able to know if my message has
been brought across effectively. Similarly, it is equally amazing how a simple
nod from the audience has the ability to boost my confidence during a
presentation.
The crafting of the questionnaire
for our proposal was another platform which had allowed me to practice various aspects of effective communication. We
had to craft the questionnaire by thinking from the receiver’s perspective
in order to predict the respondent’s answers and craft further branching questions
to illicit more information. The process was tough but I enjoyed the frank and
candid discussions the team had where all criticisms of ideas were taken in good faith. This
concept of “candour” (which I mentioned in the 1st blog post) in action is one strong factor for the good working relationship among the team.
Lastly, special thanks to Mdm Fazilah for being such an effective tutor and for sharing her personal anecdotes on
effective communications. In addition, thank you Will, Leo and Val for being
such awesome teammates. I have enjoyed the group dynamics of working with all of you.
To conclude this blog post, I have
included a video featuring Adam Savage from the Mythbusters. The final minute of the speech from Adam Savage reflects what I feel about this module.
“Achieving the end of the exercise
was never the point of the exercise to begin with” – Adam Savage
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ReplyDeleteI have always felt that the most effective mode of learning is to, as you put it, “practise what we have learnt”. Only through real-life applications, can we have an actual “feel” of the principles and theories that we have picked up in class. More importantly, applying our knowledge allows us to see if there are any information gaps and thus if any improvements are needed. The various components of this course would have been much less effective if we did not have the chance to apply what we have learnt through the various assignments, such as peer teaching, writing a cover letter etc.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that crafting a survey questionnaire was indeed a challenging process. We had to constantly think from the respondents’ point of view in all aspects of our questionnaire. In my opinion, this is one of the key principles of effective communication that I have learnt from this module – that we always have to be mindful of the context and target audience of the communication process!
On a final note, if you didn’t say it, I would never have thought that you used to read off the slides/script when you did presentations. I feel that both your presentations (peer teaching and research project) were solid, and it has been wonderful to have you in the group :) I do wish to point out the importance of eye contact in communication though. More often than not, the nature of eye contact is able to tell the audience a lot about you. For example, you definitely do not want to keep looking at the floor during a job interview, since that would indicate a lack of confidence!
Just a note that I faced a technical issue when I first posted this comment. A possible way to overcome this is to sign in first before commenting (I think many of us do the reverse). Hopefully it will work!
DeleteAnother IT related lesson learnt as a result of this module. How nice. :)
ReplyDeleteHello Nel!
ReplyDeleteI think that you brought up an important point regarding effective communication, which is feedback. This is because despite efforts to send a clear message, it is not guaranteed that one's message would be fully understood by the receiver. This is where feedback comes into play. Feedback can take place in the form of verbal feedback, or reflected in one's non-verbal communication like the furrowing of one's eyebrow. It is hence vital that a sender of a message is receptive and sensitive to the responses of his receiver, so that further clarifications can be made accordingly.
Also, I concur with your point that crafting a survey is challenging. Prior to taking this module, I always assumed that crafting a survey would be an easy task as long as the objective of the survey is set. However, after having experienced crafting an actual survey, I realized it is in fact, a complicated process with many aspects to be mindful of. Not only do we need to take the perspectives of our target respondents to ensure that the questions are easily understood, strategic planning of the questions is also required to ensure that relevant information is obtained and the objectives of the survey are met.