With my group's final presentation just recently concluded, surprisingly, I found that presenting a set of slides to an audience never felt so less intimidating. Having the audience take the role of a person involved in the proposal doubled the challenge of the presentation by demanding that we be acutely aware of the audience throughout the delivery of the presentation. With the feedback given by Ms Goh, we re-angled our presentation to suit our audience, almost totally revamping all our slides in the process. Personally, I thought our presentation, displayed a marked improvement in audience awareness as compared to our very first set of slides, and it is this awareness which I felt was the strength of the presentation.
We drew simple mindmaps and brainstormed for the possible concerns or questions that OSA and OED might have, and subsequently tried to address them in our presentation. Specific references to Mr Seah, whom we had interviewed, and to OSA and OED separately were done all with the intention of showing audience awareness. This is certainly one important presentation skill which I hope to extend to any presentations I might need to do in the future, in school or in the workplace.
Having said that, one area which I felt we could improve on was the fielding of questions from the audience. The questions came thick and fast, and seeing my fellow group members' hesitation in answering them, and that most of the questions were concerned with my portion of the presentation, I answered a majority of the questions. But on retrospect, I should have allowed Kent, since he is the team leader, to direct the questions to either ZhangJiao or Jerina or even answer them himself, while I could substantiate their points if needed. This should improve the effectiveness of our "question and answer" portion of the presentation, and is certainly another presentation skill that I would like to take note of.
With the peer teaching presentations before the mid term break, and almost 5 weeks of hard work culminating in the final presentation, I felt I have profited from this module in a number of ways. Chief amongst them is learning to pose appropriate thought-provoking questions to blog posts or group discussions. Often, I observe members of a group tend to submit to "group thinking", meaning to simply accept a person's suggestion without evaluating it. By playing the devil's advocate, and ask key questions pertaining to the suggestion, we can then all be forced to re-think one's agreement, and can thus lead to an even better idea.
Secondly, is learning to be receptive of viewpoints contrary to what I hold. Often, I find myself getting a little defensive of my own suggestions, and refuse to accept any ideas dissimilar to mine. But I found that through the blog posts and work on the proposal, I had ample opportunities to practice doing otherwise, and I unexpectedly found that a greatly gratifying experience. Learning to accept and see from another's point of view, actually allowed me to understand the strengths and weaknesses of my viewpoint even better, and should it prove not viable, accept the other viewpoint.
Albeit having picked up a number of skills from the course, one area which I aim to improve in is in adopting good turn taking strategies in group discussions. I think sometimes I get a little carried away with my suggestions, and prevented others from suggesting otherwise. To address this, i think a good approach would be to ask the other members for their opinions at various points in the discussion, and subsequently encourage everyone to speak their minds. This should give everyone a fair chance to express their opinions, and be greatly beneficial to the group's discussion.
In all, this module had been a fantastic journey, equipping us with practical communication skills that we could apply in the work place. Possessing excellent communication skills are quintessential skills for almost all occupations, and as an aspiring engineer, I think the skills I picked up should put me in good stead for my future job.
Finally, I would really like to thank Ms Goh for giving such insightful feedback, without it, I am certain I would not have learnt as much as I have now, and not forgetting all my classmates, if you are reading this post, a BIG thank you for making this an enjoyable 13 weeks!
Below are 2 interesting cartoons I thought I could share with you:
Why communication is so important
Every presenter's nightmare!
Lastly a video you could watch when you're next preparing for a presentation:
