This page will show where I have a applied professional systems approach to my work, how I have developed professional skills in the format of Linkedin Learning courses and other formats.
As I have progressed through second year, I have recognised that I need to expand my professional skills for post graduation. To begin this, I have made a Linkedin account and created a CV to particularly show off my engineering related work experience/skills. A Linkedin account will begin my networking journey, so future possible employers can see my education and work achievements.
To further expand my skillset, I have undertaken several Linkedin Learning courses, which are listed below.
“Speaking confidently and effectively”. I chose this course in particular as I face difficulty with speaking in front of others, and I would like to improve on this as I believe it is extremely important in a professional setting and if I do not improve, it may hinder my career in the future. Certificate
“Beating procrastination”. This course is very relevant and valuable to my second year modules, as there is only two submission points. Therefore I need to manage my projects independently and establish self-imposed deadlines, which requires discipline to avoid procrastination to ensure I meet the module requirements by the submission dates. Certificate
“Project management simplified”. As managing projects is a fairly new concept to me, this course is extremely useful in all of the small tasks necessary to complete a project. It is easy to forget all of the details I need to include and so I think this course was extremely helpful.
“Learning design research” Although I have completed design research before, I felt I was not doing this to a professional level and so this course was helpful to improve this. It was very detailed and I now understand what makes a professional, work standard design research. Certificate
Learning excel desktop certficate
I have used several tools and methods to manage my project this academic year, which are discussed below.
One of the main management tools I have used throughout my projects this year is Microsoft Onenote. I found this tool particularly helpful, as you can create several pages for different projects and within those pages you can create different tabs which I organised weekly. This ensured that not only did I have an updated plan to follow each week, but I could go back and look at what I did previous weeks and see if I missed any tasks. Below is a screenshot of my Onenote page.
I also created a Onenote page for the group project I was apart of this year. This was shared to the group of individuals I was working with, so that we could all edit and add to the document and different note sections. This was particularly useful for me as I took on the role of project manager. Therefore I created sections for each team member so they were able to upload any research/ideas they had and I could organise the information into the relevant section. This saved time and proved to be an efficient method of project management. A screengrab of this is shown below.
I used Powerpoint to produce a presentation on my second year project. Although I have done this to present a project before, this time I had to perform in professional manner and present my information accordingly. This presentation was also three times longer than any presentation I had done previously, so extra preparation was needed before hand, such as practicing many times whilst timing myself. The presentation is linked below.
I feel that after completing this presentation, I feel a lot more comfortable using Powerpoint and different aspects of it such as themes. I also feel more comfortable in doing presentations, which is something I wanted to work on in a professional setting at the beginning of this year, and I feel as though I have improved in this aspect.
MANAGEMENT AND QUALITY ISSUES
As well as completing the “Project management simplified” Linkedin learning course, I researched engineering management and what the different aspects of this are.
I found one PDF in particular useful (1), which outlined the skills it takes to manage engineering projects. These included technical, interpersonal and conceptual skills, and the roles that come with managing engineering projects, such as collecting information about internal operations and external events, public relations and taking on an entrepreneurial role within the project like initiating new ideas.
When beginning a group project this year with my course-mates, we allocated different roles based on our abilities, but also gave ourselves roles we were less comfortable with in order to improve our group work abilities.
Because of this, I chose to lead the group as project manager and so used the engineering management skills I learnt to approach my role. This is discussed further on the group project page.
(1) Bayar, Y. (2012) “Introduction to Engineering Management,” ResearchGate [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297136900_Introduction_to_Engineering_Management.
