Reflections

1st REFLECTION

During the techcom class, when my lecturer announced that there will be an addition section which is about e-portfolio during the tutorial class, I felt very curious about it and there were a lot of question mark flying around my head because I never heard about it before. She said that we are luckily to be selected as the class for the researcher to conduct their research. After that, I’ve done some research on what will be going do before I enter the class.

So I would like to explain a little bit what e-portfolio is. An e-portfolio is known as electronic portfolio. It is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the web. The electronic evidences are like inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks. Therefore, e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement. E-portfolios, like traditional portfolios, can facilitate students' reflection on their own learning, leading to more awareness of learning strategies and needs.

Although I have done some research about it, but still, when the person in charge of the e-portfolio told that we have to do a blog individually, I felt really surprise because it is something really new for me and I thought that what we have to do only is to doing some questionnaire set by the person in charge. To be honest, I am the person who doesn’t like blogging. I never try to write any blog before nor read any blog. Sometimes, I even also feel that playing Facebook, Friendster and chatting in the internet are troublesome. This is because I felt that it is wasting my time and I don’t have any mood of doing stuff like that.

However, recently I discovered that using Facebook and chatting in the internet can let me gain a lot of information. For example, many announcement have been posted in the Facebook and I thought I can get it whether through sms or friend, but it seem it is wrong because nowadays many people prefer to use Facebook. Therefore, I started to use Facebook more frequently. But, about blogging, it still like a stranger to me and there are many functions that I not used to them. In this case, I will give my effort to learn how to use it although it takes some time.

And now, I think that through blogging, it can help us to learn how to voice out our comment about something. It also can help us to develop our creativity because we need some creative idea to design our blog. Besides that, we also learn how to express our feeling, opinion, idea,dream and etc. in our blog where we never try to talk about it with others. Moreover, we can foster the relationship with our friend because in the blog, we can leave comment and understand the personality of our friend. Thus, I hope that blogging can also help me to develop my personality.


2nd Reflection

It has already been a while since I posted the first reflection. Recently i getting much more busier with all the report, assignment, activities in university and studying. Luckily, I managed to take out some time to write this second reflection on what I have learned in the pass few week in the techcom class.

In the few weeks ago, our lecturer asked us to search for some job advertisement so that we can do our cover letter and resume. So, I started to find the job advertisement through news paper but it was difficult because I need to find a job advertisement that is related to my future job field and the requirement for each job advertisement is not suitable to me. For example, most of the advertisement requires the employee to have a minimum of 3-5 years working experiences. However, the lecturer said it is ok that we are using it because in the cover letter and resume we can assume ourselves as a working person or as a fresh graduate applying for the job. It is not necessary to be true about the things we written in the cover letter and resume because the most important things is that we learned how to write a cover letter and a resume.
So, later I cut out a advertisement which looking for a mechanical supervisor. Then, I started to write my first draft of the cover letter and resume. I found that the guide line in the techcom book is not enough for me to write a good resume and cover letter. Thus, I search in the internet to look for information on how to write a good resume and cover letter and I have refer a lot of sample and finally I done with my first draft and submit to lecturer to check it for me. Although I try my best to write a perfect draft, however, with no experience of writing a resume and cover letter, still, I done a lot of mistake such as I didn’t use justify, forgot to write something that is important and wrong in using grammar. In the resume, I wrote that I have obtained a bachelor degree in mechanical designing. And the lecturer asked me back a question, “Why do u applying the job (mechanical supervisor) because the minimum education background that the job required is diploma in mechanical?”What my lecturer meant is that with my education background I can apply a job better than this one. It is really a good question which will be asked by some of the interviewer during the interview. Shall I answer that I want this job because I looking for experience. Will the interviewer asking me back when I have gained the experience, will I stay or leave to look for a better job? What shall I answer back then? Finally, I founded a job advertisement which posted in the internet (jobstreet.com) and it is really suitable for me because I have all the requirement of the job ( mechanical designer) and it didn’t stated that working experience is needed. So I print it out and finish my second draft of cover letter and resume by changing some of the thing in the first draft.

So, that is the story of writing the resume and cover of mine. What have I learnt from creating the cover letter and resume? First of all, I learnt how to find a job advertisement. It can be found through internet or newspaper. For internet, we need to confirm that is is not a fake one by doing some research on the company and if can, make a call. It doesn’t cost much to make a call because it is better than we are deceived by the advertisement. This is same to the searching in the newspaper. It is more difficult to find a suitable job in newspaper because it is limited compared to searching in the internet. For the STAR newspaper, we can look for the advertisement especially on Saturday. For the internet, I recommend this website: www.jobstreet.com. Secondly, I have learnt how the proper format of a resume and cover letter. This is very useful for my future job applying. A wrong format can cause us disqualified from being interviewed. Third, when we are writing our resume and cover letter, we want to make it stand out from the rest of the crowd. We're in competition with many other individuals looking for a job, so we want our resume and cover letter to make a lasting impression. Depending on the recruiter or the human resources person involved, there may be over one hundred applicants for a single job, so they need to narrow the field quickly. Hence, it is important how we write our resume and cover letter. So, I also learnt how we should write an impressive resume and cover letter by doing a lot of research through internet. Lastly, writing resume and cover letter can improve our English.

After done with resume and cover letter, we had some interview among our friend during the class so we get familiar with the situation during interview. At that moment, I realize how terrible that I am because I can’t answer properly a simple question although it is a simple one. The reasons are that my English is not good enough and I didn’t prepare anything for the interview. Luckily, this only the practice among my friends and not interviewed by my lecturer or in worse situation (during real interview in the future by employer). This make me realize what weakness that I have and I have time to improve it. So, before I am interviewed by lecturer, I must remember every single detail of what have I written in the resume and cover letter. This is important because if we answer some question and it is not same as what we written, this may cause the employer think that we are deceiving them and cause us lose the qualification for the job. Besides that, I also searched in the internet and some of the techcom book to look for the questions that may asked by the interviewer and prepare the answers for the questions. This can help us to look confident during answering the question from the interviewer. On the other hands, our appearance is also a very important factor to gain a job because it is normal that we judge a person through the first sight of the person. Following are some of the tips of what should we do during the interview which I found in the internet and I want to share with everybody:

Greet the interviewer, shake hands, smile and introduce yourself. Provide copies of your resume.
1. Think of the interview as a conversation, not an interrogation. The interviewer may also be nervous.
2. Be prepared for any type of an interview. Interviews may be full of questions or casual conversation.
3. Follow the lead of the interviewer, stay on topic, and ask for clarification if necessary. Listen well!
4. Ask a few questions to let the employer know you are enthusiastic and interested in the company. (Wait for the employer to bring up the subject of wages, hours, holidays, etc.)
5. Be attentive to body language and posture. Don't cross your arms; maintain casual eye contact.
6. Don't make negative comments about previous employers.
7. State your interest in the position and the organization with enthusiasm.
8. Politely ask when they will be making a decision.
9. Smile, shake hands, and thank the interviewer for his/her time.

After I done the interview with my lecture, although I done some mistake such as being nervous and forgot to make another copy of my resume and cover letter, but, I felt more confidence in communication and I have gained a very precious experience of how an interview is which can help me in the future. I think that my friends also thinking of that. So, this is all about my second reflection. Before I ended it, I wanted to thanks to my lecturer and all my friends that willing to help me to complete my task. Thanks to all.

3rd REFLECTION

As the subject Technical Communication 2 has been ended, this is the final reflection which I going to reflect on my group recommendation report and overall about my learning in Technical Communication 2.

For the recommendation report, it was done with the cooperation of my group member consist of six members including me. The topic of our recommendation report is “E-voting versus Conventional Voting”. Initially, we had discussed and there were few topics we were interested such as “Petrol: 95’ versus 97’ ”. We had chosen the voting system as our topic and this idea is generated because the election of student representative had just been held in our university and so do others universities too. Besides that, there are a lots of people arguing about which system is better and this issue is quite hot in newspaper especially when many students in University Malaya protest implementation of electronic voting system. Moreover, we also eager to find out which voting system is preferred by our UTeM student.

During the process of doing our recommendation report, we used several method looking for the information such as distributing questionnaire, searching through internet, looking in the newspaper and asking some of the people. Since my group consists of six persons, hence, we divided the tasks evenly to each person so that we can complete the recommendation report in short time. Since every one is busy with their assignment and reports, so, we seldom having meeting. We done our discussion only when we were free during the class session and after class or when there is a problem.

When we were doing our recommendation report, we had faced a few problems. Firstly, we were lacking of time due to other subjects’ assignments and report. This is solved with the effort and commitment of each group member. Secondly, we were lacking of experience. We solved this problem by seeking advice from our lecturer and surfing in the internet looking for information on how to do a recommendation report. However, it is considered that the progress of our report is smooth as there is no problem that we cannot solve.

Finally, after completing the recommendation report, it is the presentation of our recommendation report to the class and lecturer. Before the presentation, we worked together to finish the power point slide show. We also divided the parts to each person to present so that we would not become clumsy during the presentation. The parts are divided as in completing the recommendation report. For instance, since I took the part of discussion during completing the report, I will present back the discussion part to the class as I am the person who is clearer than the others what it is about in discussion part. If we presenting the thing that we have done, we will be more confident and we can give our best shot during the presentation. After 20 minutes presentation, we open to everyone in class to ask question but there is no question is asked as everyone seem understand and satisfy with what have we presented and our lecturer also praised us for our presentation due to the good slide show and it is clear for what we presented.
When the presentation is finished, the teaching lessons for the subject technical communication 2 also ended and we will concentrate for our final exam.

For this subject Technical Communication 2, it prepared us to face the job society after graduated. By doing the assignments such as cover letter and resume, we learned how to produce a better cover letter and resume with a right format and correct sentence in the future when seeking for a job. A good quality of cover letter and resume will help us to gain the better opportunity for an interview as the employer knows about us in the beginning is through the cover letter and resume. For the interview, I have learned a lot of mistakes. I realized that it is very important to do a lot of practice and preparation before we are called for a interview because this can increase our confidence level and will not answer wrongly during the interview. Having interview in class has trained us to become creative and to have critical thinking during answer the question throwed by the interviewer. Besides that, there is also a mock meeting held in the class. The mock meeting has taught me how handle a meeting and what is the job scope for a chairman, secretary and so on. In this mock meeting, I’m also learned that what kinds of quality a chairperson should have so that the meeting will run smoothly.

So, after finish Technical Communication 2, I have learned a lot of new things such as interview and E-portfolio. Besides that, I have improved many skills and found out what kind of weaknesses that I have. After having this subject, my English has been improved with the knowledge of English has been increased due to doing MyLine and some lesson about grammar. I also feel that I am more confident in speaking more in English. Meanwhile, the communication skill also has been improved after I done with presentation, mock meeting and interview. Others skills that are also improved are team working, leadership, networking and etc.

In my opinion, although E-portfolio is not in our syllabus, but this really help a lot. Through E-portfolio, my English is also improved. I have learned how to blogging where initially I know nothing about it. It helps to foster the relationship among our classmates and build a networking between us. In the future, I think E-portfolio can be used to help us obtain a job. But it is just one of the functions and it has more usage in the future.