Individual Reflective Journal: Business Development Course, Semester 1

This individual reflective journal reflects on a student's learning experience within a business development course. The journal meticulously evaluates the effectiveness and usefulness of the learning, detailing the student's comprehension of research methodologies, including validity considerations, data analysis, and the application of primary and secondary research techniques. The student articulates their learning process, focusing on the use of online questionnaires for data collection, and explains how the acquired knowledge of social media's role in the workplace will be applied in future professional settings. The journal covers the student's exploration of research design, the importance of setting project goals, and the identification of research limitations. The student reflects on the course's impact on their decision-making and their ability to implement social media strategies, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the course material. The journal includes a detailed reference list of sources used throughout the course.

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Assignment 3: Individual Reflective Journal
Student’s name
Name of the Institute

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Table of Contents
Question 1: Evaluate the effectiveness and your usefulness of the learning
experience.............................................................................................................................................. 3
Question 2: Explain how this learning process will be useful to you..................................3
Question 3: Describe objectively what happened in the learning process.......................4
Question 4: Evaluate what you learn............................................................................................. 5
Question 5: Explain your learning process:................................................................................. 5
Question 6: Explain how this learning you will apply..............................................................6
Reference List........................................................................................................................................ 8

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Question 1: Evaluate the effectiveness and your usefulness of the learning
experience
I have learned a lot in this course and I am sure that the learning and knowledge would
remain with me. My research topic is to identify and analyse the advantages and disadvantages
of social networks at workplace for large organizations and in the last few weeks I have learned
various intricacies of research work. Now, I am aware of various parts and attributes of research.
With the research work I can feel that the researches are complex in nature, no matter how easy
or simple it may appear. In this course I learned that four different aspects of validity should be
considered when reviewing a research design: statistical conclusion validity, internal validity,
constructs validity, and external validity.
Question 2: Explain how this learning process will be useful to you
Every week was a new week for me and it may not be possible to put the learning of
entire week in one paragraph. The learning from this course would help me to emerge as a better
professional. I am sure that I would be able to transform the learning experience in my personal
as well as professional life through my knowledge and wisdom. The learning from this course
would help me to make small and big decisions. I am sure that the learning about the use of
social media would also help me to implement the social media strategy at my future workplace.
I am pretty sure about the various intricacies of social media networks that would help me to
implement a strong social media strategy in place.

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Question 3: Describe objectively what happened in the learning process
In this course, I learned about the basic of research design and the high level process that
should be used in the research work (Sherri & Jackson, 2015). In the first week I started with the
background study of my research area. I did not finalize the topic in this week; however I started
my initial research in the area of social media. In the seond week, I deep dived into the area of
social media for organizations and I finalized the research topic of use of social media for
organizations. In the third week I established my project goal and objectives. I learned that
setting the project goals and objectives is important as it establishes project boundary (William,
James, & Arora, 2015). I also developed the PICOT question of my research work in this week.
In this week I learned about the research design and research methods that should be used in the
research. In this week, I studied about the primary research methods and secondary research
methods (Zikmund, 2012). The above journal discusses the learning in each of the week. With
the above discussion it can be said that I have made significant learning along the course at each
week. In the sixth week, I used the articles from Week 5 to continue my literature review. I
started to document the learning from each of the article in my literature review. This week, I
also started with the data design phase. I decided the participants’ type that I would need for my
research work. In this week I learned about ways to improve the research validity. It is observed
that a strong cause increases conclusion validity. With the above recommendations there would a
more established cause and hence the conclusion validity would improve. The construct validity
would also improve, as the recommendation is to use the matching technique to provide equal
environment to all the participants. This week I learned about the ways to conclude the research.
I learned that it is a difficult task to write the research report. In this week I also did a summary
of all my previous weeks. In this week I also decided the expected research outcome. In this

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week, I was in a place to design the framework to check the performance of my research work by
matching the expected outcome with the actual outcome.
Question 4: Evaluate what you learn
In this course I learned that there are always some dangers of failing to consider the
validity of a research study. The evidence-based practice may not be successful when the validity
is low (Bryman & Bell, 2015). In low validity, it is not possible to have strong case of cause and
effect and therefore it is difficult to establish adequate interventions. If I have to evaluate my
learning on a scale of 1 to 10 then I would rate it more than 8.
Question 5: Explain your learning process:
The learning process that I used in this course can be shown as:

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In this course I learned about the various primary research methods like survey, online
questionnaire, personal interview, etc. After a thorough study of all the primary research
methods, I decided that I would use the online questionnaire method as it is most effectively and
less costly method. Moreover, with the online method I can reach to a large set of people easily.
Question 6: Explain how this learning you will apply
In this course, I learned about was collected data should be analyzed. I learned that data
collection is only one aspect of the research. It is important that the collected data should ne
analyzed to make meaningful inferences. In this week I also learned about the various types of
research limitations. I realized that there could be various internal and external limitations or

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constraints in my research work and it is important that researcher should plan for both internal
and external constrains and limitations (Bryman & Bell, 2015). I decided that I would use
primary and secondary research methods to complete my research. In this week I also finalized
my articles for the research work. In this week I started with the basic design of primary
research.

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Reference List
Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2015), Business Research Methods, (Fourth Edition), UK, Oxford
University Press.
Zikmund, W. G. (2012), Business Research Methods, (9th edn), USA, Cengage
Sherri L. Jackson (2015), Research Methods and Statistics; Critical Thinking Approach, (5th
edn), USA, Cengage.
William, T., James, P. and Arora, K. (2015), Research Methods: The Essential Knowledge Base,
(2nd edn), USA, Cengage