Studying in CG1413, I can develop my communication and teamwork skills by being in team with people from different cultures. Therefore, I could recognize my weaknesses and then tried to make improvements. Reviewing the two projects I have just done, I would like to evaluate my own performance base on the following criteria:
- Contribution to the projects
- Listening actively to other members
- Working harmoniously in a multicultural team
- Resolving conflicts
It is very difficult to do something that you do not have passion on it. I have to admit that I feel more passionate doing the CG1102 than the CG1413 project. That is the reason why my contribution to the two projects is unequal. In CG1102, I discussed actively, tried to give ideas and kept thinking about the project after the meeting. On the other hand, lack of interest doing the CG1413 project in the beginning, I just tried to finish what I was asked to do without the willingness to give more inputs to the project. I just felt more interesting in this when it was near to the presentation. Therefore, I would like to apologize my CG1413 teammates for not being a good team member.
In every discussion, it is not good if I appear unattentive while people are presenting their ideas. Therefore, I tried to implement what I learnt about listening actively to encourage my teammates in giving their ideas to the discussion.
This semester I had chances to work in a multicultural team so that I can apply what I was taught about intercultural communication in real life. In spite of differences in languages, cultures and working styles, I managed to work harmoniously with my teammates. Although English barrier is a big problem preventing me from communicating actively with other teammates at first, I tried my best to improve my skills so that my English is no longer a problem towards the end of the semester.
Resolving conflicts is one of the important skills in teamwork. However, fortunately, there are no conflicts arising in my team in this semester. Although I do not have chances to resolve any conflicts, I hope that I will be able to do so in the future base on what I learnt in this module.
Finally, after studying module CG1413, I learnt so many useful skills for communicating and working in team. To all my friends, I would like to say thank you for having a good time working together, I hope we will have chances to work together in the future.
Hi Khoa,
ReplyDeleteI can empathize with you that it is hard to give it your all when the project is about something that you are not passionate about. However, being a good team member means that you should at least meet project deadlines, and complete your work in a satisfactory manner. This is important as the teams progress usually rides upon the contributions of each and every member. :) Disaster ensues if any one member is tardy or irresponsible.
However, I have no doubt that you were also an excellent member in your CG1413 group as well. :p I know this because you had been an excellent team member for our CG1102 project for the past 13 weeks. :)
Working with you had been a pleasure, and I'm really glad that you were always patient enough to explain your ideas to us. :) Personally, I feel that patience is one of the few central pieces to effective communication. :) In future, just keep doing what you had been doing in our CG1102 team - speak up, repeat if required and discuss. :D
In overall, I feel that you had improved dramatically over the past 3 months. During OP1, you were shaky and unconfident. However, by OP2, you were dressed smartly and you seemed so confident and well-versed that I was honestly awed. Serious! :)
Keep practicing and working upon your communication skills and I'm sure you'd be an awesome speaker in no time! :D
Best of luck to you in your future endeavours! :) And don't forget your 'work'! XD (sorry, inside joke. :P)
Yours sincerely,
Juncheng :)
Hi Khoa,
ReplyDeleteI have always liked your blog posts for your honest, straight-from-the-heart style of writing. Your final blog entry was no different. Your sincerity and truthfulness was evident, especially when you mentioned your lack of interest in the CG1413 project. You are no different from someone who prefers apples to oranges; not surprisingly, with programming being your forte, you would have spent considerably more time on it than some other subject which does not intrigue you as much. This is simply human nature.
It is heartening to know that you recognized your weaknesses, and was willing to seek understanding from your team-mates. But in addition to that, why not raise some solutions to this problem? Sometimes, people tend to raise too many issues or problems, but fail to produce solutions. You can try putting in greater efforts in curbing this “obstacle” of yours. Subjects you are not passionate about certainly warrant more attention. Perhaps sticking to the mantra of “others before self” would help, you do want your team mates to shoulder greater responsibilities and burdens because of you right? Team work means equal effort from every member!
You mentioned having no conflicts in your team, which is rather surprisingly! I have come to find out through the course of this semester – most of my friends in our groups, including mine; have met with conflicts (big or small) at certain stages of the project. Having no conflicts might mean that your team had little or no feedback/ teammates are easily agreeable to ideas. Well, I could be wrong! But I feel that you could take a step back from the busy schedule, perhaps, reflect upon the processes your group took to complete your objectives.Somewhere, sometime, there would bound to be a situation (big/small) that calls for some form of conflict resolution.
All in all, I have seen much improvement in you since the start of the semester. No longer are you the shy guy of the class, you have since became more outspoken, and your English language had certainly improved. Do not forget whatever Ms. Goh have taught us to do :P
All the best in your future endeavours, Khoa!
Regards,
Justin
Hi Khoa,
ReplyDeleteYou mentioned you were more interested in the CG1102 project and this made you participate more actively. Did it occur to you that maybe it was your active contribution to that project in the first place that developed that passion and interest. If you had done the same thing with the CG1413 project, the outcome might have differed. In addition, if you still find it daunting after putting in some effort to try, then at least, you would have had a better excuse for yourself. Justin’s philosophy is that “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take” and I think it is extremely applicable to your situation. The possibility that you develop interest may be small, but it exists.
I have to really commend you for improving so much over a short span of time. You ironed out many flaws which you discovered with the help of your well selected criteria in the previous reflections.
Your criteria this time was no different. However, there is a possible improvement. I suggest that you refrain from setting “Resolving Conflicts” as one of the criteria. In a way, it may sound good if one can achieve this, but please note that it is definitely not desirable to have conflicts in the first place. By setting it as a criterion and stating that you hope to achieve it in future, you gave the impression that you were anticipating conflicts.
In this case, being able to resolve conflicts is a good attribute to have but not one you should require often.
You mentioned that there were no conflicts. This could be due to measures you put in place which prevented conflicts. Seeing that prevention is better than cure, this would have made a better criterion.
Hey Khoa,
ReplyDeleteOne stark observation that I have made about you is the remarkable improvement you have made over the past 13 weeks in your fluency of language! Kudos to you for that. At the start of the semester, from what I remember you often made grammatical errors and used to hunt for the right words, but now your writing skills,vocabulary and oratorical skills have improved to a great extent!
Your dedication and hardwork is the obvious reason for this, making you an example for all of us to emulate. Do continue to put in your effort and you'll soon be able to fulfill all your criteria against which you were judging yourself.
As for the conflicts, it is your patience and understanding & calm demeanour that has avoided circumstances for one to arise.
Continue putting in your best to all your future commitments and projects. Good luck for the exams!
-Lakshmi
Hi Khoa,
ReplyDeleteI personally could understand how you feel, because I felt the same way too. I also contributed more for the CG1102 project than the CELC problem solving project because of my passion. For me, after feeling that I did not contribute as much as the rest, I tried to do up the remaining minutes on wiki. However, the effort put in was still little as compared to Kevin and Angad. Perhaps both of us should be more active and volunteer to do work from the start of the project.
Nevertheless, it was good to have you as my group mate. You are friendly to talk to, and even though we faced some problems with communication, we asked for clarifications, and thus ideas were transmitted across fully.
Certainly, you have made great improvements in your language ability and presentation. Any secret methods to improve? I would like to learn from you! :)
Hope that we would have the chance to work together again in the next three years. Good luck for the upcoming examination!
Juncheng: thank you for being patient and understanding my really bad English. You and Nitika helped me a lot improving my English in the past 13 weeks. I am very happy to have your feedback on my effort. Your knowledge about programming is very admirable. I wish I can have your passion in computing.
ReplyDeleteJustin: your comments were always very constructive. You are true that I usually point out the problems without finding solutions to them. It will take me longer time if I want to make improvements. However, I think we misunderstood the definition of ‘conflict’ and ‘argument’. In my opinion, argument is different from conflict. In a team, we argued with each other to find the best solution, but the atmosphere was very friendly. Conflicts just happen when some members argue aggressively. In my team, arguments happened usually but none of them become a conflict :).
Junius: this is the first semester we have to work in team but in the future we may have to work in team for many times so conflicts are unavoidable. I do not expect it to happen but I hope in the case of conflict happen, I will be able to resolve it. This module taught us how to work in team as well as how we can resolve the conflicts. Hence, I put the resolving conflicts in the criteria as standard to know how I applied what I learn in the projects.
Lakshmi: thank you for recognizing my improvements. I am always impressed by your speaking and presentation skills. I hope we can talk more to each other in the future so that I can further improve my speaking skill :).
JingMei: thank you for understanding my situation. I am so ashamed because I do nothing much compared to Angad and Kevin. This would be improved for our future projects. I think your speaking skill is quite good, at least you are easy to talk to and very outgoing. Thank to Juncheng and Nitika for helping me improving my speaking skill :).
Hi Khoa,
ReplyDeleteIt was a really nice experience working with you on CG1102 project. I do understand that initially it was difficult for you because all of us belonged to different cultures. Communication was an issue in the earlier stages especially because you are not well-versed with English.
I think that you have made commendable improvements with regard to your verbal skills. I remember the first tutorial session when you weren't able to communicate clearly. Now, after 13 weeks, you can communicate clearly (better than before) and with greater ease. This was possible because of your hard work and efforts that put in to improve your English.
As a team mate, I think you are a hard working person. You tried to analyse the problem critically and shared your ideas with us. You were always ready to clarify whenever we failed to understand you. You were co-operative and understanding. You listened to our ideas patiently and gave your opinion after analysing it properly.
You have made improvements with regard to your presentation skills. In the first presentation, you weren't confident and failed to make proper use of non-verbal cues. In the second presentation, you showed confidence and tried to maintain eye contact with the audience. Your verbal skills were also improved.
Regarding CG1413, I think that you should try to do your best in whatever you do. I personally enjoyed both the projects equally. I tried to contribute my best to both of them.
I would like to work with you in future.
Thank you for all your efforts. Good Job!!
Good luck for exam!!
Best Regards,
Nitika