Critical Reflection

 As the module comes to an end, compared to when I first stepped foot into the Critical Thinking and Communication module and now, I have improved on communication and teamwork skills.  Previously in polytechnic, I would rarely have the chance to participate in every lesson as there are many students who would want to do well in getting class participation points.

Despite me being introverted and naturally not wanting to participate in things, this caused me to have difficulty in participating as much as others and thus lagging behind my classmates in contributing to lessons. However, currently in the Critical Thinking and Communication module, my instructor has given me numerous chances to participate in almost every lesson to build up my confidence and vocal skills. We also had multiple opportunities to work together in a buddy system and group work, helping me gain strong teamwork skills. During my volunteering work, I usually plan and work on events alone and thus, this module was very beneficial to me.

At the beginning of the module, I set out to improve strongly on my communication and confidence skills. I believe that I have improved on it, but I know that I might not be the best compared to many classmates. In the future, I hope to improve more on participating during lessons with the techniques and strategies I have gained from this module.

For my research project, I was very lucky to be able to have a very strong team assigned to me. My English skills were generally not that good, thus leading to me not being able to write my reports and work clearly causing it to be not understandable. My team supported me by delegating work that was suited to my capabilities.

During this research project and other class works, one important skill I have learned was the proper American Psychological Association (APA). My first few works submitted showed that I was still having issues crediting sources correctly like ChatGPT, Google Scholar, etc and my format of acknowledging references was wrong. In the final report, with the help of my teammates and guidance from my instructor, I managed to understand APA even better and managed to write the team report to the proper standards of APA. I even ventured into adding photographs from online reports or articles and self-taken ones into the report with proper crediting which I had not done before in polytechnic.

Something simple like APA was very important to ensure that the risk of plagiarism is low if not none. This will showcase my integrity in ensuring that the work submitted is truly mine and not copied from online sources. This will benefit me greatly even after I have finished my studies at the Singapore Institute of Technology. I hope that I will be able to contribute more to my further reports be it in my future workplace or next semesters of projects.