End key skills Review Communication One thing I have found throughout my first year at university, is that it extremely

self-study centric. Although this is the case, it does not mean (on our course) the students are alone. Within the class a helping hand is provided by anyone and everyone. This is where I have grown. I have had to explain how to apply certain skills, theories and principles to other people and I am sure have been given an equal helping hand. Trying to explain something to someone when you only have a basic idea, or only one way of understanding of it can be difficult. After debating for example a mathematical problem or how a member of an array is accessed, it often turns out that the enquirer or disputants and I would often result in a better understanding of the topic discussed. I have both written reports and given presentations throughout this year. The report feedback proved what I supposed in my preliminary key skills review. I must try to use more simple sentences. The presentation was a group presentation and I feel it went well; however one thing I should do is rehearse more what I am speaking about. Teamwork I have worked in a team for professionalism, a team designing system requirement diagrams and finally a team programming a game in C++. The teams worked differently depending on the members. In Professionalism one member jumped into his self-assigned role as leader and due to most of the team members being friends I took a more relaxed approach carrying out the work expected of me and agreeing with what needed to be done and how. For the other projects it worked out that the teams included me and two of my friends, within this team we all strived and there was never an assigned leader of the group. The team worked much more democratically: meeting when we all agreed, taking on a more equal workload and often when going away and regrouping, providing three different methods to reach a similar result. This worked really well as with such a generous offering we could find the most efficient method. When these sorts of scenarios arose I often showed leadership skills suggesting the best method to go with, however I always listened to all reasoning and counterarguments when disagreements arose. I think to improve my team working, I need to find my voice even if I do not know the members well, or not part of their social group. Organisation and planning I believe I managed my life quite well throughout the year. I prioritised my life and in doing so gave up work to allow myself to settle into university life and ensure I have the time to take on the huge workload. I managed to keep in touch with home without it getting in the way and learned to embrace my life in Sheffield meaning I only went home when necessary or in the holidays. This meant I kept my on track, yet did not lose contact with home. When I went home for Christmas my dads downstairs radiator stopped working. This meant we had to replace it. It was decided that all the radiators may as well be replaced. To do this, floorboards came up and broke, the central heating system had to be drained and pipes had to be

cut. Time was a problem as we had to replace one a day and due to such a cold winter ensure the central heating could be switched on at night. For this time management was extremely important. The main issue that I still cannot resolve is learning to carry out the tasks set, when they are set. University has seen me be much better than in the past; however it still meant that some weeks would involve a vast amount of work especially towards the end of the year. IT Skills and Experience Along with the use of the software packages mentioned in my preliminary skills review I can now use more subject based software such as rational rose and Star UML to create UML, class and sequence diagrams. I am even better at using visual studio and can use it using almost all the environments. Following on from this I have become extremely proficient and confident when coding in c based languages such as C# and C++. Languages I have an even better understanding of are HTML and CSS and I have been taught some SQL. I have also been taught some assembly language programming using X86. Nearing the end of the year a teams had to create a game requiring a player to collect token while being chased by Zombies. This was all in C++ and within the code we implemented everything we have learned this first semester. (arrays, procedures and passing parameters through them, structures, loop, everything.). One problem I remember having was getting the zombie to chase the players character. The only way we had to overcome this was trial and error, however using this method we managed to accomplish getting the zombies to chase the player. I feel to improve my IT skills I could revise the languages we have only touched on such as the SQL. I could also revise my understanding of system diagrams.