Performance Management and Adult Education Course Reflection Report

This report provides a comprehensive reflection on an adult education course focused on performance management, undertaken by an HR professional. The course covered key theoretical concepts, including various approaches to performance management, communication processes, and the fiv...Read More

Running head: ADULT EDUCATION
Adult Education
Name of the University:
Name of the Student:
Author Note:

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Adult Education
Adult Education is a systematic form of education that is specially designed for the adults, or
for people who are working in an organisation, or joined in higher studies or maybe just
household person (Courtney, 2018). Being an HR in an eminent firm in Canada. I had been
holding the same position for the past two and a half years now. However, some months
back, I had been feeling the need for myself to know and learn more about managing the
employees and focusing on and resolving their issues. Hence, six months back I had joined a
course on Performance Management of the Employees. It was a six months course, designed
especially for the working people and had a correctly strategized curriculum focusing on the
essential aspects related to performance management.
Knowledge of Key Terms:
On joining the course, I came to know about certain theoretical aspects of the concept
that was unknown to me earlier. I had always believed that practical experience and
knowledge help to gain a position and exercise the practices properly. However, on joining
the course, this notion of me was changed a bit. I understood that having the knowledge and
concept of certain terms are not only helpful but also improves one’s expertise. Firstly, I
came to know about the various approaches that are related to the concept (Ahmed et al.,
2016). Secondly, I got to know about the essential processes that are attached to the concept.
I understood the importance and significance of communication processes to conduct the
process of performance appraisal. Secondly, I realised the concept of Normalization
(Venkatraman & Sheikh, 2016). While gaining theoretical knowledge of the concept, I
understood that I had been involved in the practice while gaining the conceptual
understanding, I learnt certain other concepts related to the same that were unknown to me
and proved to be helpful. These minute areas of knowledge provided me with a better
understanding of the theory and approaches of ways to practice that. Also, the course helped
me to understand the need and modes of motivation that are used and can be used in

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Adult Education
organisations. While practising the employee management process in my organisation, I have
practised employee motivation, but the sound understanding that I gained through the course
helped me to grasp the significance and needs of it. Further, the theoretical ground works
provided through the course cleared my conception of the same further. Also, the course
provided me the knowledge of the essential five elements related to Performance
Management. While undergoing the course, I got to know that Planning and Expectation,
Monitoring, Development and Improvement, Periodic Rating and Rewards and
Compensation (Krajewski, Ritzman, & Malhotra, 2013). Previously, while at the practising
employee performance management at the workplace, I had used all of these concepts since
they were the primary need as perceived. But, I did not know the proper terms and their
meanings. The theoretical understanding of these concepts helped me to gain an appropriate
understanding of the purpose and concept and the needs and ways of incorporating them in
the strategy. Thus, the course helped me to gain the theoretical knowledge of the concept
which I found to be essential and helpful; in the process of conducting the activity.
Understanding of my Personal Characteristics:
The course further helped me to learn certain aspects of myself that were unknown to
me. While undergoing the educational curriculum, we were given certain situations to test our
improvements and also individual group projects and papers. In the given circumstances, we
were to practice our learning skills. There were groups divided, and each group was assigned
a specific situation where we had to use our learning skills. This included our understanding
gained through the course, our aptitude, our personal understandings and orientations towards
the positions and our skill both learnt and inherited, to deal with the situations. This helped
me to understand my own perspective of the situation. I understood that I excel in certain
areas than the rest of my fellow batch mates. For example, I learnt that I have a better
communication skill, understanding ability and learning skill than the others. Further, as

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Adult Education
stated by the teacher I have an approachable and easy-going attitude that is much needed for
the conducting of performance management. I also understood that I work swift and in a
strategic manner to understand the goals and measures required to account or address those
goals. Therefore, after the completion of the course I viewed that along with gaining
knowledge about a new concept, I also learnt certain aspects of myself that I never realised
before.
The Group Project Challenge:
However, there were certain challenges that I was faced by during the course. It
happened during one group project where the fellow batch mates who I was working with
belonged to different cultures and had different backgrounds. Since I undertook the course
while continuing my work, simultaneously, I did not have much time to talk to my batch
mates. But in the project, I was to involve a thorough communication process with them and
also complete the study within the given time, and since we all were belonging to different
cultures and had different language orientations, it was being difficult to talk to them and
understand them on the first hand. Secondly, as we all belonged to different cultures, we had
a different set of understandings and beliefs. Therefore, we were then posed with differences
of opinions while conducting the project. However, with time and with the practice of
listening skills and patience, the project was submitted but it needed a little more time than
that was allocated. This was a serious issue, but of course, it enhanced my listening and
learning habit and also the level of acceptance.
The whole experience of this adult education course was quite amusing for me. I
learnt a lot of new things regarding my job as well as about myself. I realised my strengths
and weaknesses and moreover I understood what are the key components in conducting
performance management and hoe they are to be addressed. I also learnt the effective ways to

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Adult Education
address them. More importantly, I learnt how to work with and manage people from different
background. However, the teachers made this learning experience successful. Their help and
guidance and the free access to the library helped me to get through this course.

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Adult Education
References:
Ahmed, T. M., Bezemer, C. P., Chen, T. H., Hassan, A. E., & Shang, W. (2016, May).
Studying the effectiveness of application performance management (APM) tools for
detecting performance regressions for web applications: an experience report.
In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Mining Software
Repositories (pp. 1-12). ACM.
Courtney, S. (2018). Why adults learn: Towards a theory of participation in adult education.
Routledge.
Krajewski, L. J., Ritzman, L. P., & Malhotra, M. K. (2013). Operations management.
Pearson,.
Venkatraman, S., & Sheikh, K. P. (2016). U.S. Patent No. 9,363,761. Washington, DC: U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office.