Critical Thinking Reflection

 My Module Reflection

This Critical Thinking and Communication course make me unlearn, relearn and learn various skills that are crucial for survival. This makes me able to achieve the goals that I personally set at the start of the course. 

One of the goals was on the way I used to think critically. Previously, I used to think and compare just experience before I conclude. By applying what I have learned during this course, I could keep my same technique, but also implement the element of reasoning from the Paul-Elder Framework to further support my conclusion. That was applied during my literature review project with my teammates. While coming up with a solution after our research of the aurora, my team and I compared our experiences and findings during the visit to the library with elements of reasoning. We do question the reason and purpose of the conveyor we saw that is located in the library and the assumptions of librarians’ job scope. This implementation made me realise that with the use of the framework, the topic will be in-depth with different views which enable us to come up solution that satisfies every aspect of the problem.

Another goal I had set to achieve at the start of the course was improving my pronunciation. I used to not be able to pronounce correctly while having the spotlight, which affected my confidence. I was not able to fully overcome my pronunciation problem with this course, but this course was able to make me realise some of the key parts of solving my pronunciation problem, which did help me improve. With the help of unlearning and relearning the crafting of the presentation and the feedback that I receive from my classmates and Professor Brad, I learn the key points I noted while presenting. One of the points was the use of Singlish as my filler words, which seems very unnoticed to me. I was able to, not completely, improve my speech, which also make me realise that my pronunciation had not affected me that much. With that, I did improve pronunciation slightly with this course by trying to reduce filler words and be confident while giving a speech, even though I still think that I still have time to get used to it to improve further.

My Project Reflection

I collaborated with a group of four people on my research project to develop a solution to enhance the library shelf-scanning robot Aurora. With the element of reasoning from the Paul-Elder framework after comparing experiences and information we found, we decided on enhancing the robot into shelf scanning and book-picking robot.

Throughout this project, I have learned and unlearned many things during my teamwork with my team, Libbbotarms, and myself during the work of this project. One of the key things that I have to unlearn and relearn is the preferences and skill sets of my teammates to be able to assign parts of work, like the creation of the Solidworks drawing or the report writing. Being the leader of my team, I learned how to led the team from nothing to something, while being caring and understanding for their well-being as the workload piles. The presentation aspect of this project makes me unlearn the normal knowledge of giving a report presentation, learn how to give a pitch presentation, and the delivery skills like not using filler words and maintaining good eye contact.

One thing I take away from this project learning experience is that I could become confident to pitch my view and my idea, as I have critically thought and run through all the possibilities with the help of the framework. I have truly seen the benefit of the Paul-Elder framework in this project, which I will surely implement to solve real-world problems in the future.