A Portfolio Reflecting on the Development of Academic Skills

This report presents a personal reflection on academic and employability skills crucial for building capabilities and enhancing knowledge. It utilizes Gibbs' reflective model to evaluate the development of time management, academic writing, public speaking, and online learning experiences. The reflection covers the stages of description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, and action plan, highlighting both strengths and weaknesses. The student reflects on a group project, emphasizing the importance of time management, academic integrity, and effective communication. Key takeaways include the necessity of continuous improvement in academic writing and public speaking, alongside the benefits of online learning for efficient knowledge acquisition. The ultimate goal is to apply these developed skills towards future career objectives, particularly in the context of opening a restaurant.

Practical Portfolio

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
TASK ..............................................................................................................................................3
Reflection....................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................7
REFERNCES:..................................................................................................................................8
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
This report aims to cover personal reflection on various academic and employability
skills that is required to build capability and enhance knowledge. There are many skills based on
academic and employability which are essential to achieve personal aims and objective related to
future and current working environment (Walsh, Holloway and Lydon, 2018). This report is
going to implement Gibbs reflective model to ascertain how time management, academic
writing, public specking and online learning experience has been useful to accomplish project
and make improvisation. Therefore, all these skills will be helpful in my career objective I.e. to
open a restaurant.
MAIN BODY
TASK
Reflection
Academic skills are vital for every student or individual who is looking forward to built future
in an effective manner. These skills are necessary in order to achieve good grades and learn a
systematic working criteria. An individual do not learn from born years, but get admission into
university to enhance knowledge, abilities and potential. The first main target of a student is to
get good grades and passing degree from university which helps them to get job in competitive
market. But the other goals of an individual Is to improve academic skills to be capable at
workplace in future in more effective manner (Robinson and et.al., 2019). Universities provide
various projects and opportunity for students through which it influence on communication,
writing, time management, paraphrasing and many other skills that a person must have. Their
learning stage start from academic level and lead to become self independent by achieving their
goals. In my own personal experience, I move on from various stages in my learning and to
achieve my targets to be a responsible personality who is ready to perform any work in a simple
manner.\
Gibbs reflective model: it is a reflective model which provide 5 stages in which an
individual goes in its past experience of learning or many task. It is an effective model to
demonstrate own experience about how skills have developed and what consequences I need to
face during the course of time. By evaluating these experience through effective model, it is
going to be clear about my weak areas so I could make more improvisation. The main 5 stages

are Description, feeling, evaluation, analysis and action plan. All these are vital to understand
what was my total experience to learn time management skills, academic writing, public
speaking and online learning experience.
Description: It is the initial stage of reflective model in which, there is description about
all the experience during learning and how the learning have been useful for me during sessions.
The whole description will reflect some facts about the experience which could be helpful in
future. It will identify my mistakes during learning of 3 areas which are time management,
academic writing, public speaking and online learning experiences.
In my own experience, I was working with my team member on a project in which
deadlines were the major concern as we have left no time to submit projects. The task was to
present lectures in own language in which academic integrity is the major factor that needs to be
performed. It was quite time taking procedure as the task needs to be divided in all the team
members. Somehow, I took all the responsibility to perform the task in a better way and assign
work to each one of them with specific time limits (Haekal, Muttaqien and Fitri, 2021). I give
priority to major task which takes time so that, enough time will be utilised. Also, I make my
team understand about academic integrity to avoid plagiarism, academic misconduct as it could
lead to create negative impact on individuals. I assigned everyone to write paragraphs to speak
a paragraph within 10 minute. This shows the convenience of public specking in each individual
and task will assign to them in accordance to their capabilities. In order to guide and make
individual learn about topic and task requirement, I have choose online way which is become
necessary nowadays to avoid meeting and perform work safely. Online experience of learning
require knowledge of internet and how to join meetings. This experience has helped me to guide
all the teams effectively without any confusion (Paterson, 2019). Also, first I took classes and
lectures from my teacher in online learning to be effective in providing guidance and complete
the project on time. We need to be assure about academic writing and specking skills in front of
public to deliver the aim of project in effective manner. This shows me that team management I
required to work in coordination and avoid disputes which results in project success (Dennis,
Lemon and Louca, 2018). The skills like communication, leadership are helpful to manage
others and transfer my own thoughts which is clear and accurate. When I was learning the exact
meaning of academic writing, I found it difficult as this require professional language, own
words which is totally unique. But it helps to get ready to future job roles. Where academic

writing play a vital role in order to communicate with customers, use social media for blogging
and ascertain unique content for business logo, tag lines and many other professional
communication.
Feeling: it is the next most required stage for a student to analyse inner feelings and
thoughts. The term feeling demonstrate how was the experiences like and what things bothers the
most or liked the most. It says all about human tendency and behaviour while learning which
consist different feelings while listening to lectures and learn new concepts.
While delivering projects and task, I felt quite nervous as time was the key to get good
grades and achieve my skills achievement. It made me under confident at first, as we have no
time left to perform any unnecessary acts. Therefore, I felt afraid of not completing the project
which let me fail or impact on my grades (Andre and et.al., 2017). Also, I do not have
knowledge of academic writing at first which is most essential. It get nervous about my work
done to get in academic misconduct if nay works goes wrong. Therefore, I decide to learn about
proper rephrasing and plagiarism free content which helps me to boost my knowledge to rite
effective piece of work and present in front of public (Minocha, Hristov and Reynolds, 2017).
Also, I felt nervous at the time of public specking role in which I lack in communication skills
that does not fulfil my aims. So that, I came to take responsibility and felt like it is a big tasks
which will boost my confidence and I could manage my time properly by assigning work to team
members. These skills helped to to improve my leadership skills as well as reduce overlapping
of work which take unnecessary time. Online learning experience helped me to waste time in
transportation and going to attend classes and it become easy for me to sit relax and learn the
concepts appropriately. Also through online learning I keep on getting success to make other
team members understand appropriate facts at any time (Steptoe and Wardle, 2017). It is an
easy and feasible procedure that is must in today's environment. Form this, I felt there are more
of improvement required by my team members in public speaking as it require more confident
and better guidance to achieve targets for future preference.
Evaluation:
It is the next most important stage of the model. An evaluation consist all the areas of
personal feeling and how the things went in a positive and negative way (Forster and Bol, 2018).
These all are a part of evaluation of experience which gives insights of what could be done in
more better way. Therefore, I came to know about academic skills are superior and necessary to

be a responsible individual in order to be professional and informative in term of employability
role. It has evaluated that, academic writing is not easy as it require much concentration and
accuracy of what have written so that, I experience a lot issues at first while writing. It makes
confusion to undertake what sources and perform every task through utmost feasibility (Suna and
et.al., 2020). In context of time management skills, I evaluated that, time is the main key at any
workplace whether it is professional or academic, time engagement is necessary to achieve goals
before deadline which does not make the schedule hectic and every task got enough time to
achieve its objective (Gurbuz, Hanley and Riby, 2019). I have developed this area of learning
through setting time records and prioritise main activities which are required to be done as
earliest as possible. My public specking skills have helped to built my confidence and perform
task to get good grades as well as it provides me insight of developing more skills to find better
ways which helps me in nearby future. This was a nice experience to have online learning
experience as it is the most convenient way to learn and make other learn about group activities.
It makes the work simple and solve doubts quite soon (Ross and et.al., 2018). So that, I
experienced good response of my team when I guide them during the project submission as a
leader, team members were happy and confident to ask their problems and everyone is working
in coordination which helped us to do project effectively.
Analysis: this stage defines the overall analysis of the experience. Form my activity of
engaging in group project to improve my skills and make prepare for achieve my future
objective. I analysed that, managing time has helped me effectively as I could now make time
for various activities which could not before (Cronin and et.al., 2021). This makes my work
more reliable and reduce stress and pressure. Therefore, this skill is most required for every
individual to learn mange their trim for most prioritise activities. Also, academic writing is most
crucial to complete projects which make me analyse about its relevance as it drives creatively
and self actualisation of work done. It would be helpful for me tor achieve long term career
goals and improve other weak areas which require change and require practice (Waldrop, G.L.,
2017). I acknowledged my weak areas in public specking activities due to which I was getting
stage fear and less communication power. This I have developed through involving in project
which helped to better guide my team and they have also worked in an effective way. Along
with this, online learning experience has analysed the importance of technology which made our
work easy and quick to achieve targets.

Action plan: The plan is the last but most required stage of this model. An action plan is
necessary to set future goals which could not have covered in past experience. These are the
skills set that leads the whole experience in negative way (Pouratashi and Zamani, 2018).
Therefore, I need to improve more of my academic writing and public speaking skills. It could
be done through increasing communication in both verbal and written methods. Both the area of
learning would be measured through taking feedbacks and response of public. Also, I need to be
more informative in taking online learning experience as sometimes I missed out some lectures
so that, I need o be on time which eliminate hurdles of not being punctual.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded about various learning areas such as time management, academic
writing, public specking and online learning experience. This has defined through applying
Gibbs reflective model which shows various storing and weak points that require more
improvement to achieve career goals. Also, it has analyse that, all these areas are necessary in
which time management is the most crucial as it is most vital to achieve objectives by
performing tasks on time.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
Andre and et.al., 2017. Benefits of campus outdoor recreation programs: A review of the
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Cronin and et.al., 2021. Development and initial validation of the life skills ability scale for
higher education students. Studies in Higher Education, 46(6), pp.1011-1024.
Dennis, C.A., Lemon, J. and Louca, V., 2018. Term-time employment and student attainment in
higher education. Journal of Perspectives in Applied Academic Practice.
Forster, A.G. and Bol, T., 2018. Vocational education and employment over the life course using
a new measure of occupational specificity. Social Science Research, 70, pp.176-197.
Griffith, J., 2018. Criminal History and Employment: Why we need to Ban the
Box!. Bridgewater Review, 37(2), pp.29-30.
Gurbuz, E., Hanley, M. and Riby, D.M., 2019. University students with autism: The social and
academic experiences of university in the UK. Journal of autism and developmental
disorders, 49(2), pp.617-631.
Haekal, M., Muttaqien, A.A. and Fitri, A., 2021. Students' Perspectives on Future Employment:
A Qualitative Study on Indonesian Higher Education Institutions during the COVID-19
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Paterson, R., 2019. From employment to employability: Uzbekistan and the higher education
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Suna and et.al., 2020. Horizontal skills mismatch in vocational education in Turkey: The reasons
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