Reflect on and write about your learning, growth, and engagement throughout the CSC290 course. What have you learned? How have you engaged in the course? How have you grown as a professional, a computer scientist, an academic, and a communicator? Be specific and provide examples/evidence of your learning, growth, and engagement. Consider the original intent and purpose of this engagement assignment.
As the semester comes to an end, I have come to realize that I still have much to learn. I am still not an expert in communication and my writing skills are still lacking. However, that does not mean I did not learn anything from the course. I have improved my non technical skills and learned a lot of things that will equip me some basic skills needed in the workforce. Throughout the semester, I have made an attempt to learn and grow as much as I can by being engaged to the course as much as I can. I have voiced my questions and tried to participate in discussion during tutorials and lectures. In addition, I have actively upload my blogs on time even though it takes a long time to write a single blog.
The course has allowed me to become a better communicator and a better team member. From my previous blog, I questioned on the usefulness of CSC290. I concluded that CSC290 is a course that is essential for every computer science students to take. I have found many practical uses for every activity and materials covered in the course. I have learned how to communicate and work with team members effectively. To elaborate, the concept of perception check allows me to be able to communicate with team members without making them uncomfortable and avoid creating tensions within the group. Furthermore, knowing how to write emails properly will allow me to write more professional and effective emails. The group assignments has forced me outside of my comfort zone and try to actively engage with group members to succeed in the group assignments. The group work has given me an opportunity to not only improve my communication skills but to also improve my collaboration skills. The quality of our work and the fact that we completed the assignments on time is an evidence of our group’s commitment towards the course along with the teamwork and communication skills that was involved.
Furthermore, the course has allowed me to become a better programmer. After learning about UML and how to effectively write code, I have become more self-conscious about my code. I have found that my code is much more readable and the comments are not plainly repeating what I wrote but explaining the logic and reasoning of the program itself. This has allowed me to be able to go back to my code a few weeks later and still understand my code. Although I have yet to create UML diagrams for any assignments and the fact that I did poorly on the UML test, I think UML diagrams are one of the most important concepts I have learned in the course. In my previous blog where I wrote a personal reflection on the course, I have stressed on the importance of UML. UML allows critical and effective code since you are able to visualize the workflow of the system you are writing and find any logical problems in the system. It also allows you to save time when writing your programs since you do not need to waste time figuring what to write. Although I do not have any evidence to support my growth as a better programmer, my participation and blogs should be sufficient enough to display my appreciation of UML and having effective comments. In my previous blog on participation, I have mentioned on the importance of participation in the course since it enhances your learning and allows you become a better communicator. The example I used was the UML Activity Diagram that was done in tutorial. I have learned a lot about how to create UML Activity Diagram through other members by listening to their ideas and giving feedbacks. Through collaborating with people, you can learn from any mistakes and misconceptions you may had.
Although this is not related to the blog topic, I hope that this course was insightful to many students and learn how to not only become a better programmer but a better communicator as well. The course may be challenging to some people due to the course being very different from your usual courses. But I hope students had fun and learned a lot from the course to better equip them for the workforce. The way how the course is handled allows students to feel more comfortable and more open to express their opinions. I hope the course continues to be a course where students are more encouraged to be active and open to express their opinions.