Saturday, October 11, 2008

Reflecting on Your Report Writing Experience

I have a positive learning experience doing this research project. It conveys the procedures of conducting a meeting, importance of agenda and meeting minutes, and editing by peers. I found out that it is very efficient to prepare things for discussion before meeting as dragging of meeting will irritate and exhaust attendants.
I have learnt how to plan the procedures of conducting a meeting, how to write agenda and how to prepare meeting minutes. I have also learnt how to communicate to get the message across. It is not merely a sentence. It should be supported with arguments, examples, or secondary data if necessary to persuade others to adopt your concept. Sometimes ideas are easily thwarted if others do not understand what you are trying to suggest.
I still have to work on interpersonal relationship.
Being a supportive team player is important to keep the wheel turning and get things done. Without cooperation from team members, others are easily frustrated and demoralized. I have trying to be one by preparing information beforehand and suggesting lots of ideas to my group. I am pleased to be in my team as they are really helpful and diligent members.
I notice that finding statistical results within Singapore context is rather difficult as environmentally sustainable business practices are not hot spot in research yet. I tried to find ranking of green companies or number of companies implementing environmentally sustainable business practices, but to no avail; this is totally opposite to foreign countries like United States.
I like peer review in report. Incremental improvement has been made to writing report through instructive opinions when it involves editing and compilation by peers and group members. As the saying goes, wisdom comes from crowd. The more people there is to review and edit the report, the better the report will become.
I hope that the oral presentation can be presented as simple as possible to ensure everyone understand the concept.
My team members have done a great job in communication and I believe that we can do the same in presentation.

6 comments:

Brad Blackstone said...

Thank you very much, Carolyn, for the detailed post and the honest reflection. I appreciate the fact that you have found so many positive aspects to this research process. I know it has been tough work. Although you haven't explained in detail, I hope that your work on "interpersonal relationships" becomes even more successful.

One thing that I have noticed is that you have not been receiving many comments on your blog posts from others. (I also wonder if you have utilized a blogging buddy.) Why is that? Have you had problems in your blogging group? Is there anything I can do to help you? (Does this have anything to do with you being from Engineering?) Please let me know.

XiaoTong said...

Hi Carolyn,

I like the peer review of this project too. It provides a platform for idea-exchange and at the same time learning from others. Ideas from other groups would be more subjective, making these suggestions more valuable and precious. Like what you've said, "the more people there is to review and edit the report, the better the report will become."

M. said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
M. said...

Yup! I agree with Xiaotong. Peer review allows us to find out how we can improve on the final report as well as spot out minor details that we left out. (:

Hopefully everything will go well with the report and the presentation. Haha (:

tom said...

Hey Carolyn, the part u wrote about how conveying ideas should not be a sentence but instead one should explain their ideas in details, I feel is very apt. A lot of times I find that many of my other project mates tend to do that as well. Instead of elaborating, they I just throw in one liners. I think I'm also guilty of this sometimes although I try to think through my ideas before presenting them.

Also, I feel that at the start your post, some points are repeated. I think it would be better if you could merge them together and present it as a single idea. It makes your posting flow better.

Carolyn said...

Thanks for all the comments.

For Brad,

Regarding first question, it may be my posts were not interesting or I always post quite late.

I don’t utilize blogging body all the time as I always edit my blog post till it is too late for my blogging buddy to amend.

It’s best if anyone could just comment my post and I could make amendments directly. For example, just mention grammar error if there is as different people might spot different mistakes in my post. I don’t mind people criticizing my post as long as I could recognize and refine the post. Furthermore, I could learn in this way too.

For Tom,
Thanks for the comment. I shall try to edit and keep a lookout for similar mistake in future post.

Thanks.