Reflection Report: Kolb's Learning Cycle and Study Skills Analysis

This reflection report analyzes the Academic Study Skills module using Kolb's Learning Cycle, focusing on personal experiences and learnings. The report details the application of time management, group work, and reading skills, including strategies for improvement and overcoming weaknesses. The student reflects on their experiences with lectures, presentations, and group projects, highlighting the development of communication, research, and writing skills. The report also emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, self-assessment, and the ability to adapt to different learning situations. The student identifies areas for future development, such as improving presentation skills and decision-making abilities, and outlines plans to address these areas through further practice and engagement. The report concludes with a summary of the key takeaways and the benefits of the module in enhancing overall academic performance and personal development.

REFLECTION REPORT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
REFLECTION.................................................................................................................................1
Experience...................................................................................................................................1
Reflective observation.................................................................................................................2
Conceptualise..............................................................................................................................3
Plan..............................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE ACTIONS...................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Study skills are the approaches that can be applied to the learning. It is important and
useful for learning throughout the academic period or one's life. It is also called study strategies.
It includes notes taking, active listening and understanding, reading, time management and many
other things. There is an specific process or array of these study skills that may be used to
acquire new knowledge, retain it and use it in assignments This assignment will lay emphasis on
reflective writing of Academic study skills module (Models for Structuring reflection, 2015)
. This module consist of ways to manage yourself, time and problem management, how we can
improve our work by using the knowledge gained by the lectures, how to work in a team and
attain results, ways to improve our reading skills, speed, summarizing etc., various ways to use
different resources and use it, how to improve our writing skills, analytical skills by writing in
different forms such as essay, report, reflection etc. All these things have been explained in the
module.
In this assignment reflective writing is done and for it Kolb's learning style framework
has been chosen. It is a learning theory which argues the things we learn from our experiences.
This theory has four stages of learning which are Concrete experience, reflective observation,
absolute conceptualisation and active experimentation or plan. Experience explains doings or
our experiences, reflective observation explains reviews of our experiences, conceptualisation
concludes our experience and plan explains planning things we have learned (Nicole Brown,
2019). I have chosen Kolb's learning cycle as this theory helps me to explain all my experiences
that I have gained from it and helps me to conclude my learning and make future plans to
improve my skills.
REFLECTION
I will explain this reflection with the help of Kolb's Learning Cycle. This process follows
a cycle which consists of four stages such as Experience, Reflect, Conceptualise and Plan. Using
this framework and by reflecting my experiences in each phase, I will complete this reflection.
Experience
From this module I have learned many things and experienced a lot. This module has
helped me to learn various things like I acquired knowledge about management of time, work or
task assigned to me in a given time period this has helped me to manage and learn new things. I
also gained an understanding about how I can improve my work by using the things that I have
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learned form all the lectures and how to implement them. One of the most important thing I
learned form this module is to work in a group efficiently, learn, deliver best results and deliver
the results. These things have helped me to improve my reading ability, put my ideas forward by
understanding the process or the task that is assigned to me. These things have given me an
opportunity to confidently make an attempt to try difficult things with my team mates without
giving up and deliver results (Dixon, 2017). All the lectures or presentation given to us were
useful and beneficial in many ways like it helped me to conduct research and gain information,
work with my team members and understand everyone's point of view and reach to a certain
conclusion as everyone had a different perception or point of view. It has also improved my
leadership skills and resolve any problems that occur within the group. I have also learned how
to speed up my reading ability and summarize the article or the things I have been reading. I also
understood how to make notes of the things I have learned and not to criticize other for their
work in-fact understood ways to explain the wrong things done by other group members so that
it doesn't affect our group task result.
Reflective observation
There was a point where I was assigned a task and needed to complete it within a short
duration of time simultaneously with another assignment. Initially it was a bit difficult for me to
manage both the things together but with the help of my team mates I was able to successfully
complete both the assignments on time. This also boosted my confidence of doing things. I
learned that leading a group isn't easy as all the things that I do during a group project reflect the
overall outcome of the team work results. Initially I wasn't so confident about interacting with
others except my friends and working with them was out of the question but this module not only
helped me to interact with new people but it also helped me to get comfortable with them and
give my best efforts to complete the task assigned to me and deliver the outcome. In fact it
helped me to gain the confidence that I was lacking. It also helped me to understand that
communication skills are the most important thing that is desired to build strong and healthy
relationship with others (Thomas, Rafie and Williams, 2016). Initially I didn't know the way or
the approach to conduct any research and identify the key points that must be highlighted. This
module helped my to understand a strategic approach that must be followed to conduct a
research, how to efficiently and effectively get the understanding of a particular topic and what
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must be the key factors that should be focused in order to get correct information or desired
output from the research (Shum and et.al, 2016)
. This has also helped me to improve my writing skills by understand the process of writing, put
forward my ideas in a written format so that it make sense when written together. I have also
gained understanding about different ways and methods of writing which I was completely
unaware of and the most important thing that which method should be used when and under what
circumstances appropriately.
Conceptualise
This module has improved me in various ways, it has helped me to overcome my
weaknesses and turn them into strength (Zeki and Kuter, 2017). In fact next time I am willing to
participate more in different types of group activities or tasks where I can improve my way of
conducting research, gather information based on my learning and understanding of the topic,
put forward my ideas and view point, and at last document all those things in a written format in
such a way that it make sense. I have also learned new ways of completing a task timely. I can
write reflection of my own experiences or understanding by using different models. I will
implement all the new ways to complete all my work in time in-fact before time so that I can
utilize that time-period in proof reading and analyse that whether whatever I have written is
correct or not. It has improved my reading speed, summarize articles, making notes of everything
so that those nots can be utilized whenever they are needed in the future. It is important to
understand all the pros and cons of the task you are doing so that in the future we will be aware
of all the outcomes that can occur abruptly. Now I can face any unexpected outcome confidently
and resolve all the issues created because of it within the given time-period. All these learnings
have helped me to create new ideas or come-up with different creative, unusual or original ideas
that can be useful for me in the completion of the assigned work (Mauroux and et.al, 2016).
Plan
Despite of the things I have learned and implemented there are still some scope of
improvement that is required to be done in me. For example I still get confused when different
suggestions are given to be for a single task and fail to get to a conclusion and choose one
alternative to resolve a particular issue and complete that task. I still have some hesitation while
presenting a presentation in front of others. I need to plan some strategies and need to work on it
so that in future I can improve myself in order to overcome my weaknesses of presenting and
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take a decision out of various suggestions given to me. I will attend various presentation of
others so that I can understand the way they speak, present themselves with the help of body
postures, gestures etc. and practise so that I can improve my way of presenting and overcome my
hesitation of presenting in front of others. I is important for me to overcome my weakness of not
presenting as it is important and will be needing to give presentations in front of others. I will
also try to improve my critical thinking ability i.e. to reach to a conclusion from all the
suggestion or ideas given to me. For this I will improve my understanding skills so that I can
easily understand all the suggestions and implement them based on 'try and error' method so that
I can choose the best solution out of all the available ideas or proposal. All these ideas and ways
if improving my presentation skills and critical thinking ability will help me to improve myself
and complete a task more quickly and efficiently (McKinney, 2017).
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE ACTIONS
From this reflection it has been summarized that this module has helped me to
learn various ways of managing my time, work and solve all my problems that has occurred. It
also helped me to understand different ways to implement the things I have learned from all the
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Figure 1: Kolb's Learning Style
(Source: Brown, 2019)

lectures that I have attended. These lectures had helped me to improve my ways to approach a
problem and solve it. It has also helped me to learn how to work in a group effectively in such a
way that I can present my ideas and point of view for that particular topic and contribute in
achieving results. My reading skills had also been improved for this module and I learned how to
understand and summarize a topic accurately, improved my speed of reading and helped me to
make notes of the given topic in such a way that all the important key points are included in it. I
also learned to make presentations in a group. This module helped me to improve my
communication skills and interact easily with my group members and deliver the task on time
and also taught me to manage all the assigned task on time simultaneously. I also learned to
make myself comfortable and interact with others as communication is one of the most important
thing that is needed to build relationships. During this reflection writing I also learned various
models for structuring reflection out of which I have used kolb's learning cycle.
I also identified my weaknesses that was needed to be solved. During this module I
learned that I hesitate in giving presentations in front of others and I also get confused when I am
given more than one suggestion and ideas. In future I will attend more lectures, training
programs and others presentations in order to improve my presentation skills. I will also try to
practise and present presentation so that I can understand my flaws and overcome it. I will try to
attend seminars for improving my critical thinking skills, I will also take suggestions from my
teachers in order to improve my decision taking ability. From this module I have achieved
various things like I improved my reading ability by improving my reading speed and making
accurate notes, one of my biggest achievement is that I learned to manage my work, time and all
the problems that occur during the accomplishment of my work. . In future I will willingly work
in group assignments as we get various opportunities to learn different things and different ways
of doing a particular task. Working in groups helps us to identify our weaknesses or mistakes
that we commit and the ways to overcome our weaknesses and solve all the errors or mistakes
that we commit.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Dixon, N.M., 2017. The organizational learning cycle: How we can learn collectively.
Routledge.
Thomas, T., Rafie, K. and Williams, E., 2016. 8: Integrating Functional Resonance And Kolb’s
Learning Cycle To Understand Sociotechnical Systems. Critical Care
Medicine. 44(12). p.88.
McKinney, E., 2017. Using Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle to lead students in learning about
sewable circuits.
Mauroux, L., and et.al., 2016. Writing reflective learning journals: promoting the use of learning
strategies and supporting the development of professional skills. In Writing for
professional development (pp. 107-128). Brill.
Zeki, N.T. and Kuter, S., 2017. Impact of collaborative and reflective writing activities on
students’ autonomy in writing. Quality & Quantity, pp.1-18.
Shum, S.B., and et.al., 2016, April. Reflecting on reflective writing analytics: Assessment
challenges and iterative evaluation of a prototype tool. In Proceedings of the sixth
international conference on learning analytics & knowledge(pp. 213-222). ACM.
Online
Models for Structuring reflection. 2015. [Online]. Available through:
<https://skillsforlearning.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/preview/content/models/index.shtml>
Brown, N., 2019. kolb's Learning Style. [Online]. Available through: <http://www.nicole-
brown.co.uk/reflective-model-according-to-kolb/>
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