Saturday, October 18, 2008

Reflecting on the Research Project Experience

Our team, Bin-Oxygy, had been working hard on our research project since Week 4-5 (coming out a research topic) till now (the end product of the whole research project - Communication Skills Development in FOS). Workload is getting more and more each week, especially when the times we had to tabulate our survey results. This research project had been part of our daily routine to work on from doing research on the topic, coming up with the survey questions, writing emails to ask for interviews, meeting up with the interviewees, writing up the project parts by parts in order to meet the dateline of the drafts, and lastly editing the project to make it a better one.

Every one of us was assigned to different parts of the project to work on. Every week, we will have a discussion to check on each other’s progress on our individual part before our Tuesday and Friday ES2007s small group tutorial. For this project, we had made use of different kinds of communication methods – face-to-face, emails, MSN, phone conference and even online conference.

There are several things which I have gained insights on from this research project. Firstly, communication skills and time management are really very important (not only for this project.) We may come from the same faculty but the modules we took are different. Due to our heavy workload of our core curriculum, lab reports and other commitments, we still managed to hand in our work on time and meet up for our group discussions.

Next, from this research project, we managed to apply those skills that we learnt during ES2007s lesson, i.e. writing emails with clear and concise details, attending meeting with an agenda, effective communication skills and the 7Cs. Also, ES2007s module inspires us for our research topic! We had known so much more about the Science undergraduates, how communication skill is really important in the workforce and what the employers are really looking for from undergraduates.

Lastly, I would like to thank my group mates – Guang Yi and Xinyi for being understanding and their support throughout the whole process. And, all the best for our oral presentation and work hard for it again.  And not forgetting, our tutor, Miss Happy Goh, for her time and effort to read our drafts, and to highlight our mistakes to us. 

6 comments:

GuangYi said...
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GuangYi said...

Going into this project, I have gotten to know you and XY even better and this was partially fulfilled by harnessing the communication skills I have picked up in class.

Like I have mentioned in XY's entry, knowing you girls also helped eliminate the "initial barriers" to communication that is usually faced by people when working together with unfamiliar people.

I really thought that our group got off to a very good start. Hopefully, we will be able to pull off a stunning and informative oral presentation as well.

Cheers
Guang Yi

Sze Min said...
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Sze Min said...

Hi shao bin,

Glad that all of us have a nice report writing experience albeit the busy schedules that we had to handle in the process.

I totally agree with you that we really had to source out all kinds of communication channels so as to make the communication process easier. These various kind of channel indeed improve the report writing process as it was difficult to have a face to face meet up every now and then due to the different commitments of each of everyone in the group. Similarly for my group, we also made use of phone conferencing for the project. It was indeed interesting to do such a conference over MSN messenger as we are able to grasp the tone of the speaker in the process which makes our communication easier. And I believe that the experience taught us more about the communication skills as well.

Good luck for the upcoming oral presentation. :)

Darren said...

Dear Shao Bin,

I agree with you that having clear communication is important as without it, there will be no coordination and no work will be done. The cooperation in my group helped me in coping with other assignments and test that came together during the period that we had to prepare our reports.

I also agree with Guang Yi that knowing each other before hand can help break the 'initial barrier', and helped understanding towards each other. I was really grateful that my members were also very serious about the project and even cancelled their appointments so that we could discuss the proposal before the submission week.

Hope you can pull off a stunning oral presentation.

Cheers,
Darren

oxy said...

Hey girl,

I think this the third project that we had work together. And you know what; I really enjoy working with you. Those fun and sweat we had, are definitely sweet memories to me.

I agree that communication skills and time management are important especially working in group. With our individual workload, there are many times we have to learn to compromise with each other, which is definitely evident in our group.

Personally, I think in a way we are perhaps luckier then other group is that we do not have the problem of breaking the 'initial barrier' since we already know each other before the project. This helps to enhance our working experience together.

I wish to take this opportunity to thank you and guangyi for this wonderful working experience and I hope we would have such chance to work together again.

Cheers
Xinyi