After joining the activity, I have learnt the importance of strong cooperation between team members when organizing an activity. During the initial planning stage, various ideas were collected regarding the activity flow of the day and the debate topics to be assigned to the freshman members. Before having the final decisions, team members and I discussed the brainstormed ideas on their relevance to the current issues happening around us. Here are where communication skills and thinking skills come in place to succeed a group discussion.
During the day of the activity, the development of critical thinking skills was observed not only in me as a facilitator, but also in freshman members as participants. As a facilitator, I have learnt some aspects of problem-solving to deal with unexpected situations when taking the task of a timekeeper in order to make sure the activity goes on without interruptions. When there is any occurrence of unstructured situations during the activity, we communicate in the message discussion group.
Besides that, I have gained some insights on the current issues such as the examples related to heteronomy in foreign countries raised by the participants. This reveals the application of open-mindedness as I understand that it is vital to objectively evaluate certain circumstances by acknowledging biases in life experiences.
My self strength towards the activity is being a team player in the activity as I am able to cooperate closely with team members. To facilitate the activity, I took the role as a timekeeper by ensuring the speaking session of each participant to not exceed the time limit. An online chronograph was used. When the participants continued to speak upon reaching the time limit, I would remind them that the countdown of time limit is reached and prompt the next session to be carried out.
To conclude, the activity went on smoothly and ended within the set time. In my opinion, the only challenge is that the participants were not able to have face-to-face discussion during this critical anti-epidemic period. It would be better for all of us to return to the campus and exchange opinions face to face.