Time flies and it is the end of the semester. My journey through ES2007s has been an interesting and enriching experience for me. At the start of this course, I was not very confident about myself giving a presentation to a class and did not know how to write an effective resume and cover letter. Eventually, this course has assisted me greatly in building up my confidence in giving presentations, as well as honing my writing skills, especially the 7Cs for proposal, resume and cover letter.
During the course, much time is spent on doing the URA proposal. First and foremost, I feel that the collaboration between me, Jeremy and Jen Sern worked out well. Frankly, I do not think that I can produce such quality proposal without their contributions. The three of us constantly made an effort to provide feedback for almost every completed task. During discussion, all of us were also open to opinions and everyone was given opportunities to contribute his own ideas. In order to increase efficiency, we adopted the "Divide and Conquer" strategy. Workload was distributed rather equally amongst ourselves, except for the compilation which was solely done by Jeremy. We also made sure that everyone was comfortable with his assigned work. Furthermore, deadlines were set to minimize the amount of last minute work. However, there were still instances whereby some of us could not meet the deadline due to academic and other commitments, resulting in occasional burning of midnight oil.
As engineering undergraduates, we tend to place too much emphasis on the technical aspects of our project. Initially, we focused too much on the technical aspects and overlooked the more important portion of our proposal: benefits of our implementation. Eventually, we managed to steer our way back to the right path. Initially, we intended to have an interview with professors from NUS department of civil engineering. However, we did not receive any reply from them. Prior to presentation, three of us were willing to fork out some time from our hectic schedule just for rehearsal. In all, I feel that everyone in the group was responsible and cooperative.
Throughout the project, I felt that it was a hassle to use wiki as a collaborative tool. We relied heavily on face to face meetings after class, e-mails, sms and our NUS IVLE created community. While using wiki, we sometimes could not upload our document or the uploaded format will be altered drastically, compared to the format we done on Microsoft Words. Moreover, if there were announcements or changes to the proposal, we would rather use the more direct approach of informing one another via sms. With sms, we would be informed immediately. On contrary, creating announcement on wiki may only send notification via email which we may overlook.
Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to both Jeremy and Jen Sern for making the project a success. In addition, I also want to thank Dr Radhika for encouraging me and providing me guidance on my shortfalls throughout the course. The skills that I have learnt during this course would definitely prove very useful, be it in my daily life or my future career. I will definitely continue to work on these skills to further improve them.
During the course, much time is spent on doing the URA proposal. First and foremost, I feel that the collaboration between me, Jeremy and Jen Sern worked out well. Frankly, I do not think that I can produce such quality proposal without their contributions. The three of us constantly made an effort to provide feedback for almost every completed task. During discussion, all of us were also open to opinions and everyone was given opportunities to contribute his own ideas. In order to increase efficiency, we adopted the "Divide and Conquer" strategy. Workload was distributed rather equally amongst ourselves, except for the compilation which was solely done by Jeremy. We also made sure that everyone was comfortable with his assigned work. Furthermore, deadlines were set to minimize the amount of last minute work. However, there were still instances whereby some of us could not meet the deadline due to academic and other commitments, resulting in occasional burning of midnight oil.
As engineering undergraduates, we tend to place too much emphasis on the technical aspects of our project. Initially, we focused too much on the technical aspects and overlooked the more important portion of our proposal: benefits of our implementation. Eventually, we managed to steer our way back to the right path. Initially, we intended to have an interview with professors from NUS department of civil engineering. However, we did not receive any reply from them. Prior to presentation, three of us were willing to fork out some time from our hectic schedule just for rehearsal. In all, I feel that everyone in the group was responsible and cooperative.
Throughout the project, I felt that it was a hassle to use wiki as a collaborative tool. We relied heavily on face to face meetings after class, e-mails, sms and our NUS IVLE created community. While using wiki, we sometimes could not upload our document or the uploaded format will be altered drastically, compared to the format we done on Microsoft Words. Moreover, if there were announcements or changes to the proposal, we would rather use the more direct approach of informing one another via sms. With sms, we would be informed immediately. On contrary, creating announcement on wiki may only send notification via email which we may overlook.
Lastly, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to both Jeremy and Jen Sern for making the project a success. In addition, I also want to thank Dr Radhika for encouraging me and providing me guidance on my shortfalls throughout the course. The skills that I have learnt during this course would definitely prove very useful, be it in my daily life or my future career. I will definitely continue to work on these skills to further improve them.
Thank you very much Eric for making this group project both meaningful and exceptionally interesting. I agree that the Wiki does have its limitations, on top of its instability. Perhaps some things, such as direct meetings, can never be replaced by technology?
Eric, thanks for the good work delivered! There wasn't a good motivation to use Wiki as we see each other twice a week. If the Wiki was used to share information to public, then only will it make sense for us to use it, as in the case of Wikipedia. To reply Jeremy's question, direct meetings have its advantage in the instantaneous feedback. It allows continuous and fluid flow of ideas without being hindered by the administrative aspects of sharing one's thoughts. If technology allowed for a cheap means of communicating(think of a mobile webcam and projector), direct meetings can occur over long distances. We should look at how technology extends the platform for direct meetings.
ERic - you're a good communicator. You just need to be more aware of how good you are! No need to be self-conscious, especially when you have done the job. I known it's a personality thing but now that you are aware - slowly but surely - you can change that. You have good command of the language and a clear sense of how you want to communicate- you just need to convince yourself that you can be good at this:))all the best to you.