Professional Skills

ENGR1401
Mr. Peter Monteodorisio
Mont0067@flinders.edu.au

ENGR1401 Professional Skills

Lecture #2 Week 6

Executive Summaries &

Team Reflections

Welcome!
Assignment Due Dates
Draft Chapter Feedback
Executive Summary
Team Reflections
Reflective thinking

Assignment Due Dates

Week 3-5
Aug 10-28: Academic Integrity/Library Assignment
Week 6
Aug 31- Sept 4: Draft chapter submission
Week 8
Sept 14-18: Executive Summary +
Team Self Reflection
Week 9
Oct 5-9: Team Project Tender
Week 11
Oct 19-23: Final report
Week 12
Oct 26-30: Oral presentations in class

Draft Chapter Feedback

Tutors may take some time returning
your draft reports
20x55 = 1100 pages
Plus corrections
Plus grading
As well as teaching subsequent
workshops and personal activities

Expect them to start to return late

next week or during the first week of
mid semester break

Draft Chapter Feedback

Common Mistakes
Incomplete or poorly constructed sentences
Wordy language
Use of personal pronouns within the main
text.
e.g. Use of I, we, our
Poor formatting
Not enough content

Discourse
A discourse is a language or a way of communicating
within a specific society
Professional Skills and the EWB challenge have
their own discourse
These are a wide variety of things including...
Vocabulary
Genres
Structures
Referencing conventions
Ways of thinking

Team Reflection

Team Reflection
1-2 pages in length per person
Contains:
An introduction to the Reflections
Separate sections for each person
Well written, reflective writing
Correct Grammar and Sentence Structure
Logical Progression of thoughts
Strengths and Weaknesses of your team and report
creation

Reignite-EWB Challenge
Report Criteria
Available on FLO
(EWB Challenge material)
Your final report will be
marked from this
Treat it like a checklist

Reignite-EWB Challenge
Report Criteria
Areas that apply to your Team Reflections:
Section 2a- Appreciation for engineers role in the
global society

Section 3b-Undertake reflection of the community

consultation process and capacity building processes that
would need to take place during the life of the project

Section 3c-

Outline the difficulty they might expect

to encounter, when trying to communicate with the
community

Thinking at University
-Graduate Attributes
Who are
Knowledgeabl
e

Who can Apply

their
Knowledge

Who
Communicate
Effectively

Who can work

independently

Who are
Collaborative

Who value
Ethical
Behaviour

Who can Apply

their Knowledge
We expect our students to develop the ability to use their knowledge to
plan, to analyse,

to think critically, logically and creatively, to

reflect upon and evaluate ideas, options, and potential

solutions to problems, and to make and implement decisions.

Who are
Collaborative
We expect our students to interact effectively and
properly with others in a variety of settings. This
includes, where appropriate, working

cooperatively and productively within a

group or team towards a common outcome. It also
includes showing respect to others and to their ideas
and perspectives, and learning to negotiate and

resolve conflict or difficulties constructively.

Thinking at University
Expectation that students engage in deep thinking
Critical Thinking & Reflective Thinking
Critical Thinking:
The objective analysis and evaluation of an issue
in order to form a judgement (Oxford Dictionaries
2015)

Reflective Thinking:
Reflection is a process, both individual and
collaborative, involving experience and
uncertainty
(York-Barr 2006, p.32)

Critical & Reflective Thinking

The questioning of assumptions
Dont look for easy answers
Accept that some questions
may never be answered
Questions that are answered
may not remain so
Honour the process
Thinking>Answer

Team Reflections & Writing

Start by writing down some questions
How did I perform as a team member?,
what areas could I have improved on? Why?
Keep Questions open
Pursue your questions as far as possible,
investigate unexplored scenarios
Reach a point where your initial question
becomes lost in your thought processes or
rooms of thought

Ask yourself
Have I written in Informal register?
Do I ask more questions than I answer?
Am I writing about my personal feelings,
beliefs and definitions?
Am I writing for myself?

Remember
Reflective writing is personal, there is
no formula

Two Types of Reflection

Reflection
Letting your thoughts range deeply about a
particular subject
Critical Reflection
Identifying assumptions that underlie
particular beliefs and challenging or
questioning these assumptions
This form of reflection can often change your
view point of the entire world.

Reflection is Difficult
Becoming reflective is an incremental
process (Grellier & Goerke 2014, p.95)
Students engage in reflective thinking in two
ways
Reflection on your own work
Reflection on the work of others

without commitments to subsequent

changes in how we engage with ourselves,
others and the world around us, no
improvement will be realised
(York-Barr 2006, p.32)

Reflective Questions
Which ideas did I find most
interesting, challenging or
inspiring?
What did I learn?
How does the new concepts I learnt link into my old
perceptions/learning?
What connections are there between this text and others?
How did my learning alter my viewpoint or perspective on
the content?

Why Reflect?
Rethinking ThinkingTrevor Maber
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJLqO
clPqis

Team Reflections
Raw Data
Filtering
Assign Meaning
Assumptions
Conclusions
Adjust Beliefs
Take Action

Team Reflections
Your team reflections are a detailed record of how you worked within
your team
This can include..
Team Strengths
Team Weaknesses
How you felt during team
meetings and out
Whether team processes were
easy or hard work
Feel free to use I

Executive Summary
Follows the same formatting as the
rest of the report
Is similar to an Abstract

1-3 pages long

Difficult to write well
Summary of the key points of your
report
Appears before the contents page

Executive Summary Help

What should it include?
Statement of your reports objective
Main subjects covered
Scope and limitations
Research methods used
Conclusions
Recommendations

Statement of Your Reports

Objective
What is the goal or purpose of the report?
Who is the report for?

This report has been created in conjunction with the

Engineers Without Borders Challenge 2015 in order to
help create Social, Economical, Environmental and
Sustainable solutions to common problems encountered
by the people in Bambui, Cameroon, Africa. Its focus
was on...

Main subjects covered

Keep statements of main topics brief
Include only main subjects and important points
Gather all the main points before writing

For this report the main focus was on the lack of consistent
power provided to the people of Bambui; Design area 3Energy. Within that Design area we further focused on
cooking technologies as the current cooking techniques
cause serious health issues amongst the populace. Our
proposed solutions...

Scope and limitations

What areas does your report cover?
Was there any areas that you wanted to research but
found the information unobtainable?

Whilst planning the implementation of the design finding

information regarding the average number of people living
in the same house was difficult to acquire. This limitation
prevented correctly scaling the design to accurately
account for family size. In response the design...

Research methods used

What resources did you use?
Was there a system or method to your research?
Did you conduct tests using your prototype? Will you?

As a team various areas of the report were divided and

researched within a specific schedule by each member.
The report draws upon a variety of physical, electronic
and personal sources for information...

Conclusions & Recommendations

Similiar to Main points of your report gather these
before you write this section
Make sure that you are still summarising

Our recommendations fall under three broad

categories which are also related to the triple
bottom line rule; economical, environmental and
socio-cultural recommendations. Firstly, under
economical recommendations it is proposed that...

Questions

References
Grellier, Jane. Goerke, Veronica 2014, Communications
Toolkit, 3rd Edition, Cengage Learning Australia Pty
Limited, Victoria, Australia
York-Barr, Jennifer 2006, 'Fundamentals for reflective
practice', in York-Barr, Jennifer,Reflective practice to
improve schools: an action guide for educators, 2nd
edn, Corwin, Thousand Oaks, Calif., pp. 31-64.