Extravaganza - The Oral Presentation

The module “Professional communication” is indeed one module in NUS that provides the student with ample chance to work with different people from different fields, permitting proficient and interacting communication opportunities through projects and allowing peers to learn from each other positively and effectively.

Time really files and now we are already in the stage of finalizing our “major” project for this module - The Oral Presentation.

Believe it a not, I am always blessed with great team members in the group who add spices to my overall working experience. (Though I may always seem to be complaining about them, in actual fact, they are awesome!)

The team member consist of two relatively serious-looking and amiable seniors who have relatively different personalities who came together with me and called ourselves, “SupermEn”

(Hopefully I unleashed their inner humorous side during the project…)

Preparation

The team set aside our common goals for this project and we agreed upon to achieve excellence in this project.

With that common goal set in mind, we set off to brainstorm and come up with our main ideas. Due to many different perspective of view different members have, we faced a situation of not being able to come up with a main idea that was able to substantiate as a strong point for our project. Plenty of ideas starts to flow in, however we were unable to finalize our point to the extend we start to lag behind compare to other teams in the class who have already proceeded on to the next phase of the project.

In order to finalize a plan, the team set up various group discussion platforms according to our convenience using technologies such as GoogleDoc as well as Whatsapp application to aid in our discussion. This was essential due to different schedule of each member; it was relatively difficult to find consensus timings for discussion. The different ideas were then collated in our document which aids the team in effectively identifying the main concern we would like to work upon. Finally, coming to a main point being identified successfully.

After the main idea was developed, the preparation proceeded smoothly and the progress of the project was updated systematically in our communication platform. Whenever the need arises, a face-to-face meet up were scheduled accordingly to the member availability, to some extend over the weekend.

 

Though the process was rather hectic, fortunately the members were of people who are able to take critics with an open-heart and are joyous by nature. Each and every one is able to provide concise and concrete suggestion timely and handled different issue effectively. The process was handled openly and maturely. Overall, the preparation process was enjoyable with work being accomplished yet with constant humors accompanied to lighten the hectic moments.

Delivery

Datelines were set and met for each task assigned to ensure the proper progression of the project. Task allocation was also frequently reviewed to ensure the proper delivery of task.

Fortunately, the team does not really have issue with members who faced major problems and fear with presentation (all members are home-grown Singaporean and “thick-skinned” to start off with) except some presentation-style issues such as unconscious habits when presenting. The team sets aside suffice time to meet-up face-to face to have numerous dry-run practices within our team apart from the one conducted in class where valuable feedbacks were received.

Though the delivery process was not a big issue, the team faced a problem. Due to the more formal presentation style this project adopts as well as the targeted audience group involved in this presentation, the usual light-hearted, joyous and humorous style of presentation style that most of the member in this team prefers has to be omitted, revised and altered accordingly. Slides were also reviewed numerous times to ensure the appropriateness of the theme in order to correspond to our presentation.

 

Presentation Aids

After many discussions, the team decided that we will stick to the conventional PowerPoint presentation however ideas and flow of the presentation were taken into careful consideration during presentation. Pictures and videos were incorporated as an eye-catcher of our presentation to highlight the importance of our proposal. Many pointers and tips on presentation skill taught by our course coordinator, Dr Radhika were applied and discussed throughout the preparation process till the delivery stage to ensure a professional yet persuasive presentation being delivered.

 

Overall

Many of us will have to agree that the oral presentation has the heaviest workload among all the other assignment in this module and also carry a relatively huge percentage in terms of assessment. However on the whole, the oral presentation allows the student to apply what we have learnt over the entire span of the module and apply it in our “final” presentation. Be it in term of managing conflict all the way to handle a professional presentation, the oral presentation covers it all. Although it might consume a lot of time for preparation and to come out with the final presentation, overall I felt that the oral presentation is an enjoyable and fulfilling experience.

Definitely is an “extravaganza” for this module!  

I believe most of my classmates will share this similar sentiment….

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Signing off...
Edmund Yap