Reflection on OP2

We had our second oral presentation of this semester on Mar 25, last Thursday. As usual, a reflection would probably help me to improve my presentation skills in the future. In this post, I’m going to reflect myself on my performance in the second oral presentation.

Comparing to the first oral presentation, I think I’ve made some improvements. First, I felt myself not as nervous as during the first oral presentation. It is very easily seen that during oral presentation one I was very nervous and repeated myself a lot. My voice was also very soft because of nervousness. However, during the second presentation, thanks to my teammates’ encouragement, I was more confident in presenting our ideas. Although it could be seen from the video I was still a bit nervous and repeated and stopped sometimes, the general impression was more confident. Second, I was more confident in answering questions from the audience. In the first presentation, I was so nervous that I almost did not answer questions at all. This time, I was able to confidently answer questions from the audience. What’s more, I made more eye contact with the audience and smiled more. I knew I was feeling a bit nervous on the stage. So I tried to remind myself constantly to look at the audience and smile more so that I could give the audience an impression of confidence. Although I prepared cards for my scripts, I tried not to read them so that I could focus on the way of presenting rather than memorizing the scripts.

There are also some aspects that should be improved in future presentations. One problem is that I’m still feeling nervous when I stood up and presented. When I felt nervous, the chances of forgetting the contents became higher. In other words, I had a blank mind when I presented. In order to overcome this problem, the only way is to train myself so that I would not feel nervous in front of the class. Although it needs time, I believe I could do well in the future. Another problem is that I was not using body languages effectively. Good gestures and expressions usually leave a good impression on the audience. However, I almost stood still with a stiff expression during the presentation. I need to remind myself to use more body language in future presentations.

In conclusion, my oral presentation was better than the first one. However, I should practice more to make improvements in my presentation skills.

Reflection on Meeting One (Rewrite)

Picture from: http://pic1.ooopic.com/uploadfilepic/sheying/2008-08-23/OOOPIC_vipvip_20080823010228a45ce13a7c919b8323.jpg

(Since the last reflection on our first meeting was not very well done, I would like to rewrite a reflection on the meeting.)

When I reflect the meeting again, I come up with two criteria on deciding whether a meeting is successful or not. First, every member must come well prepared for the meeting. Second, everyone must be active during the meeting.

In order to make a group meeting effective, all the group members must come prepared for the meeting topic. I think all members have done well for this part. As we could see from the video clip or hear from the audio recording, all the members are familiar with this topic and have a clear idea of what are we supposed to talk about in the meeting. For myself, I read through the lab manual and thought of possible solutions that might be raised during the meeting. Then I critically evaluated them before coming for the meeting. So I was able to discuss with my group members the pros and cons of different ideas.

Besides good preparation, each and every members in the group have to be active in coming up with ideas. I have to say that I did not do well. During the meeting, Jun Hao talked a lot and really presented his thoughts to us. In contrast, I was much too quiet. It was not because I did not understand topic. I just wanted to evaluate in detail all our ideas and see which one is better. But I ignored the fact that without communicating with other members, one could never solve a big problem on his own thinking. So I need to be more active next time.

This is the link to the video clip of our meeting.
http://blip.tv/file/3214581
You could also find the full version of our audio recording from the page.