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Introduction

Think about a time when you had to identify the key cause of a problem and come up with a workable solution. How did you gather the relevant information? During my MSc project I was attempting to work out how I could invoke remote method invocations on a program written in Java from another particular program written in SML (a functional programming language). The problem was trying to establish what would be the best way to get the two programs to communicate. The key to gathering the relevant information was to be systematic. The first phase was to try and establish if there were any standard ways that may allow for two programs to communicate in the way that I needed. I knew from my previous reading that the Java language provided for remote method invocations with Java RMI. This was used as a starting point for research. Further information was gathered through whatever means available like the Internet and books that focused on communication technologies. I had to assess the also the possibility of having to hand write the communication between the two programs that I had. ...read more.

Middle

Q2 think of an occasion when you were required to explain something technical or complicated to a person or group who lacked relevant knowledge on the subject. Who was your audience and what information did you need to explain? My audience was fellow students in my MSc IT course who were struggling their Java programming. I needed to explain some of the fundamental concepts of the language that they did not grasp. This included things like how methods and classes are used and the motivation behind them such as how they vastly simplify programming. What difficulties did you get experience in getting your thoughts across? The main difficulty that I had was that they were not naturally interested in the subject that I was teaching them about. Simply telling them facts was never work in getting the message across. I had to be as imaginative as possible and try and draw as many diagrams as possible or come up with some real-life analogies that they could relate to, and thus arouse an interest in what I was saying. ...read more.

Conclusion

This way I could make sure that everyone's individual work would fit in with everyone else's efforts overall. This way we could escape inconsistency in our final draft design. How did you contribute to making the team successful and what was the end result? I was able to measure very swiftly which group members were good at which tasks. Thus I was able to help ration out and organise the weekly tasks appropriately. Whenever, someone was unsure about an area that I had knowledge I was always ready try and explain. By utilising my communication skills I was able to motivate the other team members so that we kept working hard until the final deadline. I was able in part to lead by example. I tried to keep as confidant as possible and meet the weekly deadlines that were set. I made sure that everyone shared my belief that we would complete the project with excellent results. When difficult decisions had to be made, I appeared as certain in the choices as possible so that my confidence in them would filter over to the other team members. ...read more.

This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our AS and A Level Information Systems and Communication section.