Reflective Journal EPP1 PDF

Preview

Summary

A couple journal entries for the final reflective journal....

Description

Reflective Journal About Me: My name is , and I am in my 2nd year of studying a Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) Diploma in Professional Engineering Practice. My major is Civil Engineering. Effective team membership and leadership: In my first semester of university in Autumn 2019, I was enrolled in 48230 Engineering Communication. The main objective of this subject was to participate in the EWB Challenge. This is a competition where students were given certain problems, in relation to a struggling country, and had to create a design solution. The country that we were going to be focused on was Timor Leste. Students were asked to form groups of four, and then choose an area of study in which they wanted to improve for Timor Leste. Our group decided to work on Water Access and Quality in Timor Leste. The group I was in, no one knew each other which made it difficult to have a solid start. According to Tuckman’s model of team stages, we had entered the ‘Forming’ stage. This states that we had little agreement, an unclear purpose, and barely any guidance or direction. As the weeks went on we started to become more cohesive and started to become more effective and efficient. Our first few assignments we achieved high marks as everyone was doing their part. However, this changed later on in the semester when group members began to slack off and weren’t pulling their weight. This annoyed me as I had to keep reminding them of due dates for tasks and what they had to do. Now we had entered the ‘Storming’ stage of Tuckman’s model. This states that was plenty of disagreement, conflicting ideas and power struggles. Also, there was always arguments when deciding which team member was going to do which part of the assignments. One assignment we were told to present our research and examples of our design solutions, and due to the lack of effort and communication a couple of the team members were still finishing their part of the presentation while other teams were presenting. Surprisingly, even though we were barely prepared we still managed to achieve a decent grade for this assignment.

In hindsight, I could’ve been clearer and more assertive when communicating what had to be done to the other team members, however I don’t think I’m responsible for the education or participation of other Uni students.

Safety, diversity and inclusivity in engineering workplaces in the student’s field of practice (Engineering Major): In my second semester in 2019, while studying civil engineering, I completed the subject Chemistry and Material Sciences. This subject required a safety induction which include things like: wearing lab coats, wearing safety goggles, holding hot objects with tongs. This was important to minimise the risk of accidents occurring in the lab. However, there were instances in which the safety rules weren’t being followed. One class we measuring the tensile strength on a piece of Perspex, and one of my group members wasn’t wearing his safety goggles. After the Perspex had reached it max tension a little piece had snapped and hit him face closely missing his eye. This is a clear breach of the safety rules, and was a case of stupidity as it only takes 2 seconds to put on safety goggles and it could’ve severely damaged his eye. Another problem in this instance was that he was standing very close to the machine. If he was standing further back this may have prevented him being struck in the face by the Perspex. Another class, we were using hammers to harden certain metals. One guy on other group near me was waving the hammer around and doing tricks with it. This is a very immature act and shouldn’t be done anywhere, especially in a lab. This could’ve resulted in serious injury to himself or any of his peers. To conclude with, when there are rules in place you should follow them for your own safety. Safety isn’t something to joke with as overlooking safety can lead to serious injuries and accidents....