Learning Contract Level 5 Project

This learning contract is developed with an aim to document the outcomes of the learning and development of skills needed for working in a corporate environment. This contract is like an agreement happening between me and my tutor. Through the learning and development processes, I am able to achieve skills learning communication, team work, and problem solving.

Learning Contract Level 5 Project
Section 1: Student and course details
Name:
Tutor:
Project/Placement: Simulation
Section 2: Focus
Aim/Problem Statement
This Learning contract is developed with an aim to document the outcomes of the
learning and development of skills needed for working in a corporate environment.
This contract is like an agreement happening between me and my tutor. Through the
learning and development processes, I am able to achieve skills learning
communication, team work, and problem solving. This development practice would
help me gain practical lessons on how corporate work so that I can better prepare
myself as a candidate for employment.
The modules would help me learn skills in my academics that can be useful in my
real-life work experience. The learning contract is a guiding tool that would server as
a reference document for me to record my lessons that I gain from executing a
project. My project involves development of a brochure for a Travel and Tourism
course run by Florence city centre. It covers the details of Florence as a tourist
destination and includes details of its cultural heritage, culinary traditions, country
side attractions, and the study program designed for 6 BSc (Hons) on Travel and
Tourism. The learning contract gives the details of the goals of the project and the
activities that are needed to achieve them.
The learning contract would form the base for the creation of a personal
development plan for myself which would help me learn about real working
environment and gain experience of working on teams through a simulation work. I
would be able to learn more about how teams work together, how problems are
solved at work, how people communicate with each other and how conflicts are
managed if they occur between people (Ohlendorf, 2011).
Learning Outcomes
As a result of this project I am able to:

• Build a portfolio of evidence using a range of methodologies and activities
such as log books, critical incident diaries, employer feedback and supervisor
feedback
• Identify need for skill development and map them to evidence taken from the
project
• Demonstrate my knowledge and understanding of the background of the
project
• Evaluate my capability to plan project before its implementation (Mishkind,
2014).
Section 3: Justification
In the project, I have to create a brochure for a Travel and Tourism course which
would be run by Florence city centre. The brochure contains the details of Florence
as a tourist destination and includes details of its cultural heritage, culinary traditions,
country side attractions, and the study program designed for 6 BSc (Hons). Travel
and tourism business bring revenues to any country contributing directly to its
economic development and increase the Gross Domestic product. Florence offers
many heritage sites and places that can help in gaining revenues through tourism.
There is a need for having people into the business of tourism for which right
understanding of the place’s culture, attractions, and more is required. A course on
tourism can teach a travelling business enthusiast on these skills that they can
contribute to the industry (Davies, 2006).
The project would help me understand how to think creatively, how to make
decisions, how to work in teams, communicate with others and manage conflicts.
The project involves a team in which one person is writing, another is involved in
research, one is writing and remaining involved in coordination and delivery work.
The project is a simulation of a real work that an institute could be doing to create a
program for learners.
It would also help me fill the skill gaps I have and overcome my weaknesses. I am
not very good at managing conflicts or working with teams which can be worked
upon during this project. As the project demands working in collaboration, I would
have to work wither others. As this is a project that needs a lot of ideation, there can
also be difference of opinion between team members which can result into conflicts. I
have decided to utilize this as an opportunity to understand how conflicts can be
resolved at work.

During my lectures, I learnt about project management theories that covered
concepts like communication management and team management. I also learnt
about the Tuckman’s model of team formation that identifies four stages of team
development including forming, storming, norming and performing. This gives me
some foundation to work on and I can apply these theories to the project case to
learn the application through practice (PMI, 2013).
I find myself strong in some areas such as my ability to learn things and adapt to
deliver fast. I may not have experience of working in teams but I have a naturally
tendency to respect people and thus, I gain acceptance from them. Also, I like to
play fair and use logic to take decisions. I would not like to get into any kinds of fights
and thus, do not get involved in any conflicts. However, this can also bring a
weakness out which is my inability to see people fighting and find ways to resolve
conflicts between them. I rather tend to avoid getting into fights rather than being a
mediator.
SECTION 4: METHODS
I am using simulation as my learning pathway because this method gives me the
freedom of choice of the project. With simulation, I can work with fellow students who
I would already know which would make it easy for me to take part in team activities
and avoiding conflicts. As we will already be familiar with each other’s strengths and
weaknesses, we can fairly decide the roles and responsibilities. If a real company
project was taken as a learning pathway instead, it would have left me clueless
about my responsibilities, the company, project, and the project members. I would
have to spend significant time trying to understand all of them adapt to the work
setting which is skipped in the case of a simulation project.
From my earlier experiences in life, I have observed many people get into conflicts
not because of any technical or functional misunderstanding but merely because of
the differences in their personalities that make them not accept the point of view of
others so easy if they not matching their values or beliefs. In the case a team that
has familiar members, all will already be aware of each other’s personalities and
would know how each of them would respond to specific situations which would
make it easier to anticipate behaviour and accordingly make plans to avoid conflicts.
With simulation, we can create an environment that is similar to an actual working
environment and test theories and methods learnt with flexibility. I could place myself
on any team role and learn from the project work. With teams known to me, it was
easy at the stage of forming but since I am not really very good at working in teams, I
found it challenging to work. As a learner, I need to accept my weakness and only
then I would be able to work on it for improvement.
After the college is over, we would get placements in the company. If we do not have
the right exposure to the work environment then adapting to the new environment
would become very challenging. Simulation can provide a glimpse into the corporate

working with project-based experience and give a feeling to the team of how to work
on real projects. This would help them understand the challenges that are faced in a
project work. With this experiential learning, a student can gain some understanding
of how to adapt to a work environment which would make the process of joining in a
real company somewhat easier. With this simulation project, I would be able to
identify working challenges, my weak areas, applications of learning, conflict
management methods, and more. With challenges explored, I would be able to
arrive at solutions to problems and thus, also gain the problem solving (BIS, 2010).
Section 5: Timetable
This Brochure Making project would be completed in three weeks and the
learning module would be completed in five weeks.
The student would record every activity that is executed in this project to keep a
track of how the project is progressing. For this, the student has used Gantt chart.
The chat can help in monitoring project activities while the project is going on which
helps in keeping track if the project is going as per planned schedule. Managing
timelines could be very challenging in a project environment as they are affected by
the availability of resources and the efficiency with which they are used. Wile proper
planning is essential to ensure that project meets its timeline requirement, it is also
important to monitor that actual progress to ensure that things are finished on time. I
have prepared a Gantt chart for the project starting from 18th march 2019 to 8th April
2019 when it would be completed and presented.
I could learn from my previous experience that too tight timelines can create
pressure on the team members and in our project, the timeline was not too strict but
was somewhat tight considering our lack of experience. It is important that when
working in the team, time is also allotted for the discussions and not just for the
activities as project work does require a number of instances were decisions have to
be taken after brainstorming. This every day before we started with the activities, we
allotted a time for brainstorming and taking mutual decisions. However, the time that
we assigned for the discussion could not always be maintained and often there was
an extended discussion that would happen which would also affect our delivery
capacities by eating into the time allotted for the actual work. A person thus has to
keep track of the time and monitor the meetings so that he could push the team to
finishing the conversations on time.
I found another challenge in managing time. I found that despite the sound and
careful planning, some delays could not be avoided. This could have been more
pronounced if we did not know the team already but with some understanding of
each other, we could anticipate such possible delays and accordingly plan for
avoiding them or mitigating their impacts on the project deliveries. However, the fact
still remained that despite our understanding of each other on the personal front, we

hardly knew anything about how we fared professionally as a team. There were
difference sin personalities, learning styles and even leadership styles that could
create conflicts between us. With timetable assigned, people can be more focused
on the deadlines and on the task yet the experience for real is very different from
what is being planned on the paper. Time management skills are thus needed
between the team members if the project has to be coordinated well and completed
on time.
The Florence city course brochure needs a highly collaborative work such that all the
work activities managed by different members of the team are interdependent.
However, some of the activities can be managed separately at the same time if
assigned to different people. For instance, a designer and a writer can work at the
same time separately but only after they have discussed on the possibility of
integration of the content with the designing. Editing work however, would follow the
work of editing and thus, is dependent on it. While one person could be editing, other
people could get a relief from project work and get themselves involved in the
creation of the presentation. Some team members found this approach haphazard
and thus, later we decided to follow the project in a sequential manner, we had
people working throughout to ensure that deadlines were met.
Section 6: Evidence of accomplishment
I would be able to prepare a portfolio of the evidences of my learning from this
project and these would include:
.my learning contracts
. Project report
. Log books
. Learning Journal
. Ethics Review form (BENAIJA1 & KJIRI, 2013.)
Section 7: References
Signed: Tutor/Supervisor

Signed: ____________________ Student
Date: 30/03/2019
References
BENAIJA1, K., & KJIRI, L. ( 2013.). Project portfolio selection: Multi-criteria analysis and interactions
between projects. ENSIAS.
BIS. (2010). GUIDELINES FOR MANAGING PROJECTS: How to organise, plan and control projects. BIS.
Davies, A. (2006). Management development through self managed learning: the case of West
Sussex County Council. Emerald Publishing.
FME. (2014). Project Scope Management: Project Skills. FME.
Mishkind, A. (2014). Evidence-Based Professional Learning. State of California.
Ohlendorf, A. (2011). Conflict Resolution in Project Management. MSIS.

PMI. (2013). A guide to the project management body of knowledge. Newton Square: Pennsylvania.:
PMI.