Employee Learning and Development: Reflective Paper Insights Gained

This reflective paper provides a comprehensive overview of a student's learning journey in an Employee Learning and Development course. It delves into key insights gained from the course content, including the characteristics of adult learners and future facilitators, team dynamics, and the importance of self-concept, motivation, and readiness to learn. The paper highlights challenges faced, such as balancing commitments and financial constraints, and discusses strengths like listening and resourcefulness. It also explores personal teaching philosophies, drawing inspiration from effective educators and outlining personal goals as an educator. The student connects course concepts to real-world experiences, emphasizing the application of teamwork, collaboration, and critical thinking skills in future professional practice. The assignment also includes information on program design, diversity and inclusion, and the importance of understanding the difference between diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The student also designed a diversity and inclusion training program, including needs analysis, learning objectives, delivery methods, and learning activities.

Running head: EMPLOYEE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT 1
Employee Learning and Development
Name of Author
Institution of Affiliation
Date of Submission
Employee Learning and Development

EMPLOYEE LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT 2
Introduction
This reflective paper involves a reflective summary that addresses the knowledge and
skills gained from the course. It includes key learning from modules and extends it beyond the
content. It reflects on the main concepts and analyzes how these key concepts will incorporate
the main insights gained in my future practice as a human resource manager. In other words, it
explores the key learning, relates to the course material, explores them beyond the content and
relates the knowledge gained to my future success as a facilitator.
Key Insights gained
Some of the key insights that are included in this paper include me as an adult learner and
future facilitator challenges that I experienced throughout the course, my facilitation experience
and team dynamics in consideration of my group processes. Besides, the paper highlights some
of the key concepts from my course that stood out most for me.
The first key learning is about the adult learner and future facilitator. In this topic, I was
able to learn some of the characters that I should have as an adult learner and facilitator. We
were able to learn key characters such as the need to know, the learner’s self-concept, the role of
the learner's experience, readiness to learn and orientation to learning as well as motivation.
According to this topic, I was able to learn that I was a facilitator should know the outcomes of
learning and know-how this learning will benefit the students. Another key concept that I learned
in my course is self-concept where I was able to understand that I need to be self-directed
towards my goals. I was able to take note of the role of learner’s experience where I was able to
understand that as a learner, I should have education, knowledge, and understanding. Also,
learning orientation involved what I want to learn and apply it in a real-world situation.

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Furthermore, I was able to understand that I should be motivated towards my work and be ready
to learn from real-life situations.
Throughout the course, I was able to face some challenges that I should reflect on in this
paper. One of the challenges that I faced is balancing of family commitment, school life, and
social life. As an adult I have a family to care for and with a lot of tasks that I was required to
complete in and out of school, I could find myself in dilemma. My schedule was always packed
and sometimes I had to postpone some of the activities especially social activities to complete
the course successfully. Another challenge that I was able to face is the financial barrier. Money
was a huge factor when it comes to adult learning and with all bills that I had to pay for the
course and family, bills were too high thus financial issues.
Apart from time and money, another biggest challenge that I was able to face is doubt. As
an adult, I could feel like I should have it figured out and attending classes I could feel like I am
going a step backward. The truth is that, doubting myself to embark on going to school while
having responsibility as a father could expose me to chances of failure. Coupled with insufficient
time and money this could deter me forever but thanks to almighty as I was able to overcome
these challenges and advance my way to career happiness.
Various strengths make me a good facilitator. One of these strengths is the ability to listen. With
my listening ability, I can sense the feelings of individuals both to the explicit meaning of words
and also to their tone and their implicit meaning. I will take advantage of my ability to listen by
making myself a good facilitator in the future. As a good listen I will be able to actively listen to
speakers, be able to repeat or respond to what the speaker said as this will ensure the speaker’s
meaning is correctly understood by the audience. Another crucial strength that I have as a
facilitator is resourcefulness and creativity. In the future, I will be able to take this as an

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advantage by creatively engaging with my group and bringing in ideas when shifting the agenda.
Furthermore, I will use my sense of humor in sharing laughter to my audiences thus creating joy
and alertness during meeting sessions.
Besides my strengths, I have also the weaknesses that I need to improve in order to be an
effective facilitator. Some of my weaknesses include a lack of effective techniques of
questioning and a lack of effective communication skills. I need to develop effective techniques
of questioning as the skills seek to clarify and check for comprehension. With effective
techniques of questioning, I will be able to probe the understanding of my audiences in relation
to their creativity and their logical listening. I will also need to take short programs on
communication skills as it will give me the courage to open communication with a large group of
individuals.
Another important program that I was able to undertake during the course is team
dynamics. In this case, we were able to do certain projects in groups. In these team projects, I
was able to learn and experience crucial skills that will make me an effective facilitator in the
future. One of the experiences that I could gain from these team projects is mind mapping which
is based on brainstorming. With brainstorming, we could think clearly and explain the objectives
of the projects in our own words. The other concept is bloom’s learning domains. In this case, I
could gain mental skills, physical skills as well as various attitudes when doing new tasks.
Furthermore, I was able to gain creative thinking skills that could help me to find ideas for
solving some of the challenges that I can face.
I was able to learn that teamwork and collaboration is crucial in the development of
effective training programs. This is because it helps individuals involved to come together, share
a common goal, combine their strengths and help each other in coming up with effective training

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programs that will benefit all the stakeholders. Some of the positive experiences that I was able
to gain were that I was able to completely participate in teamwork thus executing the goal of our
projects. I was also able to fully collaborate with each individual in the group thus making it
easier to accomplish our program activities.
Personal teaching philosophy
Some great teachers have inspired me one being Marie Christine in Germany. She is
famous for her action-oriented learning approaches such as mentoring programs to motivate and
increase self-esteem to learners. Other teachers who have inspired me are Raymond Chambers of
the UK and David Calle of Spain. I can confirm differences in behaviors and values of these
great teachers when compared to less effective teachers. These great teachers have personalities
of patient, caring, kind and have been characterized by the ability to develop good relationships
with the learners and are lifelong learners.
Besides, these great teachers have the dedication to their profession, good listeners, focus
on collaboration and are adaptable which is opposite when it comes to less effective teachers.
While reflecting on myself as a future trainer, my thought about teaching and learning is that
great teachers are not defined by the mastery of their lesson plans but they are defined by their
passion, values and their behavior. My motivations for teaching include my patient, caring and
the need to effectively train learners to become our effective leaders tomorrow. The best
approach which I feel is most effective in teaching include oriented learning method which can
motivate and increase self-esteem to students. Other approaches include cooperative learning and
the use of inquiry-based instruction. My personal goals as an educator are to be a great teacher
who can inspire students, mentor learners and help learners articulately follow their values.

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Reflective practice: Application
In relation to the key concepts and insights I gained from the course, I can relate self-
concept, motivation, and readiness to learn to my above-mentioned learning experiences. I can
firmly connect self-concept to my capability of learning as I jointed NCC independently because
I was quite interested in doing army exercises. Even I knew the physical benefits of these
exercises. Moreover, another two characteristics of Malcolm’s adult learning: motivation and
Readiness to learn to connect to my internship work experience in ‘Satguru Enterprises’. I was
internally motivated to working and learning new skills such as being attentive and organized,
etc.
Also during team projects, I gained experience in teamwork and collaboration. With
skills of teamwork and collaboration, I will be able to apply them by collaborating with other
facilitators and learners for quality outcomes. Also, I was able to gain skills of mind-mapping
which will help me in the future to critically think and understand the issues that my learners or
student might be facing.