OP Reflection

Hi all. Firstly, thank all our classmates for giving us some support and patience during our presentation and ask some challenging questions during the Q&A session. I would also like to thank my team members, Xiaoshi, Sylvester and Wyhow. It is a great experience to work with you guys.

I have watched through the video several times and tried to find the strengths and weakness of the presentation. I really think the video method is a good way for self-reflection because it allows me to see myself in the audience’s eyes. I have found many problems which I have not thought about before. Below is my reflection of my presentation.

Preparation

During our initial brain storming of the ways we could use in our presentation to make it more interesting, Xiaoshi come up with the idea of news broadcast to cover the problem finding and survey analysis parts. As these two topics are relatively boring,we think a news broadcast is a good way to grab the audience’s attention.

We originally planned to use Powerpoint for our presentation and I had come up with my old way of slides with many cute pictures. Thanks for Wyhow for introducing us the software Prezi, which has a brilliant interface. However, after I went through the presentation skills and slides guide Brad mentioned to us, I thought I had better changed the way of my presentation from “funny and cute” to “Professional”. Then I changed most of the pictures from clip art pictures to the more professional ones. At the same time, we decided to cut down the words on the slides to let the audience to pay more attention to our presentation itself.

I think the weakness is that we did not have enough rehearsals and we did not have ‘a full rehearsal’. During our rehearsals, we did not fully play like the real one; we still refered to our notes or slides sometimes. Thus during the real presentation, when there was suddenly nothing to refer to, we tended to get nervous and forgot the words.

Delivery

After watching the video of my presentation, I think there are several strengths and weakness. The news broadcast idea is quite creative and sounds interesting, the video and the special “StepUpNewsAsia” logo look quite natural and real.  

One biggest weakness is the less of organization of the whole presentation. It appears a bit messy. We actually had discovered this point during our rehearsal, but we failed to find ways to improve it. I think this may due to the difficulty to find a natural transition to bring the news broadcast in.

I have also found some problems regarding to my own delivery. One is that I did not speak very fluently. As I wanted to practice my oral speaking skill, I did not write a script and memorize it. I did not want to turn the presentation to reciting. Although I practiced for several times, I still cannot made it very well during the presentation. I think I need to practice my English further. The other problem I found is that although I did not recite, it sometimes sounded like I was reciting. I did not speak with variations of tones and speeds to show some emphasis. I also found there was no pause between sentences which may make the audience tired and difficult to listen to.

Audiovisuals

We had two videos used in this presentation. I think the student interview one is quite good as all the students we interviewed looks quite natural. The way of the video is also the normal way of interviews in a news broadcast. The second interview with Wyhow, who plays as the professor is also done well. However, the problem is that it does not show professions because it is obviously a fake one by interviewing someone in the team. However, we still show our thanks to Wyhow because he acted quite well.

One of the biggest weakness or mistake we have made is the sound system. Although it was fine at last due to the help from the other group, it still leaves a bad first impression on our presentation. I think this is a lesson learned that we should pay attention to every detail.

The Prezi is quite a good software. However, as we choose to use the cell phone to control it, there are some problems. The cell phone went to standby mode after a short while when I was presenting. When I tried to click to change the slide, sometimes the first click only ‘wake’ the cell phone and I need to press a second time. This resulted to the unsmooth way during my presentation.

In conclusion, I think this presentation is good lesson. Although it had some problems, we still did not regret to try the new way of news broadcasting. I think we need to challenge ourselves to try something new and progress with making mistakes and reflection.