Reflective Essay on Orientation for Success in Higher Education

This reflective essay explores the orientation for success in higher education, emphasizing the importance of reflective learning for personal and professional development. It discusses the significant impact of COVID-19 on the hospitality, leisure, and travel industries, highlighting financial losses, reduced customer numbers, and effects on employees. The essay also examines the role of formative feedback in improving summative assessment work, detailing how it helps students identify strengths and weaknesses. Furthermore, it identifies the cultural and behavioral demands of studying for a business and management degree, including the need for cultural understanding, professionalism, and ethical behavior. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of peer-to-peer support and team working in enhancing the learning experience, promoting collaboration, communication, and a more effective learning environment.

Orientation for Success
in higher education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Discuss and reflect the COVID-19 impact on the hospitality, leisure and travel...................1
Discuss the usage of formative feedback for informing and improving summative assessment
work........................................................................................................................................2
Identify and discuss the cultural and behavioural demand of studying for a business and
management degree................................................................................................................3
Discuss the importance of peer-to-peer support and team working in enhancing learning
experience. .............................................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
References:.......................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Reflective learning is the effective way analysing the self strengths and weaknesses. For the
success in the higher education the reflective learning is efficient method to present the portfolio
for professional and personal development (Botha, 2021). The report is the reflective learning
essay to explain the importance of the reflective approach for the orientation of success for
higher education. The report will reflect and discuss about the impact of COVID-19 on the
hospitality, travel and leisure industry. Further the use and benefit of formative feedback in
improving and informing summative assessed work is discussed. The cultural and behavioural
expectation of studying for the business and management degree is identified in the report. At
last the significance of peer-to-peer support and team working in enhancing learning experience.
MAIN BODY
Discuss and reflect the COVID-19 impact on the hospitality, leisure and travel.
The COVID-19 has spread its impact all across the world, but it has its major impact on
the hospitality, leisure and travel because the first and foremost priority of the government and
businesses was the safety and security of their people (Mazzetti and et. al., 2020). Due to
COVID-19 all the businesses were shut down for long period which impacted the economic
growth and corporate profits. After the COVID-19 when some businesses where allowed to open
but hotels, resorts, restaurants and other travel and leisure remained shut down for long run. The
pandemic had lead the hospitality, leisure and travel to take tough decisions regarding the
survival. Some of the major impact faced by the hospitality, leisure and travel are:
Financial loss: due to the restriction over travelling, gathering and complete lock-down there
were no passengers and visitors for this industry that lead to the downfall in their sales and
annual revenue and increased the cost of maintenance. In travel their was extra cost of PPE kits,
face shield mask and also the flights where allowed to take 50% passengers at one time which
definitely increased their additional cost and turned into loss.
Downfall in number of customers: even after the COVID-19 when the government allowed the
hospitality, leisure and travel to open their businesses they were restricted by bounded by strict
time restrictions, safety rules and also the fear among the people for the diseases lead to the
heavy decrease the count of the visitors in hotel, passengers in travel services (Huang and et. al.,
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2020). The people avoided travelling internationally, visiting restaurants and hotels due to threat
of spreading virus which lowered the customers in these industry.
Impact on employees: The company's within the hospitality, travel and leisure become the part
of heavy financial losses due to which there was also lay-off of employees. Due to the poor
financial conditions of this industry the company's shut down completely for life long due to
which employees where terminated. Employees were also facing the issue of pay-cut.
Discuss the usage of formative feedback for informing and improving summative assessment
work.
Formative feedback are the immediate feedbacks provided to student by their teachers or
mentors. The summative feedback has goal to analyse the student learning in the end comparing
it with the benchmark set by the institution (Magano and et. al., 2021). Formative feedbacks are
used by the teachers to inform the students about their lack in skills and knowledge thereby
providing them with immediate solutions to exceed the limits of their knowledge and learning by
focusing on learning skills and capabilities. It also helps in analysing the students overall
learning for that particular time out of the knowledge delivered by the teacher so has teacher can
understand which area needs more attention and focus. Formative Feedback are basically used to
determine the gaps between the planned learning and the actual learning in order to inform the
student and improve its current summative assessment work (Liu and et. al., 2021).
The main focus of the formative assessment is to monitor the students ongoing learning
in order to give ongoing feedback that can be used by the tutor to inform the student to improve
their learning and summative assessment work and also help the instructor in improving its
teaching. Formative assessment help the students to recognise their strengths and weaknesses
and then target the areas that are required to be improved or need efforts. They are useful for the
tutors to identify the students that are struggling with inefficient learning and also address their
lacking immediately.
For the student it is important to improve the summative assessment as they are high stake means
possess high value in the life of a student to grow, therefore the formative feedback are useful for
the information related to the summative assessment (Mackintosh-Franklin, 2021). Hence the
formative assessment is useful for both student and teacher to inform and improve the work of
summative assessment. It is also beneficial to analyse self drawbacks and recognise their
solutions to improve them for better work in future.
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Identify and discuss the cultural and behavioural demand of studying for a business and
management degree.
Cultural expectation: study of business and management includes the different areas such as
learning of human resource management, supply chain, marketing, business expansion modes
etc. There is a cultural expectation from a student to study the degree of business and
management effectively (Smith, 2021). The cultural expectation includes the factors like:
 A student is expected to respect and obey the needs and demands corporate culture as this
is the most important part of the study where the student will learn how to adjust and
manage I the corporate culture.
 A student is also expected to understand and follow other country culture as marketing
concepts and expectations requires the culture analysis skills for which student must
showcase the diversified culture belief.
 A student is expected to follow the culture of common language, corporate dressing sense
and the culture where the student must be open to thoughts, sharing of ideas and
presenting itself in front of crowd (Lachman, 2020).
Behavioural expectation: to study the degree of business management along with cultural
expectation there is also behavioural expectation from the student. The students are expected to
behave professionally and must possess the learning behaviour. The behavioural expectation
includes the factors like:
 The behaviour of the student must be polite and soft towards the colleagues should
exhibit the team working quality in the behaviour. The behaviour of student should be
more innovative and have entrepreneurial behaviour as this important for business and
management course (Klyver, Schenkel and Nielsen, 2020).
 The student must exhibit high energy and never give up as business contains with ups and
downs therefore it is very important to have positive behaviour towards the failure and
must enjoy the success with fun.
 The student must have social and interactive behaviour as in the study of degree of
business and management it is important to interact and be socialize to gain more
knowledge and to understand other perspective for business and customers viewpoint
(Geier, 2021).
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Discuss the importance of peer-to-peer support and team working in enhancing learning
experience.
Importance to peer to peer support in enhancing learning experience is:
Peer to peer support is the learning process is the term used for the collaborative educational
strategy in which the two colleagues, staff, student or any person learn from each other (Chen,
Park and Breazeal, 2020). The peer to peer support has great importance in the learning
experience because it includes the sharing of knowledge, experience and ideas between the
participants that is mutually beneficial. Peer to peer support is also useful in learning experience
as it helps in the development of transferable skills, increase the habit of collaborative working,
improve planning and organising skills and much more. With such activity in learning there is
giving and receiving of feedback that helps in evaluation and monitoring of learning. It increases
the effectiveness of the learning process and also the experience of learning become more
memorable for long term (Babaei and Bamdad, 2020).
Importance to team working in enhancing learning experience is:
Team working is the effective approach of collaborative learning and working where the two or
more participants work together to complete the task (Walker and et. al., 2020). Team working
is very useful in building relationship and network that enhance the learning and working
experience both. Learning to work effectively with others improves the communication and
compromising abilities. Team working in the learning process of the student enhance the
motivation for learning, encourage the person to work effectively like others and also make the
learning more exciting and knowledgeable. Team working reduces the pressure of completion of
work which is useful in focusing on more learning and also there is cooperative and collaborative
learning experience (Robbins, 2021).
CONCLUSION
From the above reflective essay it is concluded that for the student reflective study and its
elements are important to analyse the self worth and drawbacks that are necessary to be
improved. It is analysed that COVID-19 has impacted the whole transport, travel, leisure and
hospitality industry badly. The pandemic has lead them the huge financial loss and also lowered
their customer count. For the student to increase the value of the summative feedback it is very
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important to have formative feedback in order to attain the information related to the limitations
in learning so that they can be improved for summative feedback. For the study of degree of
business and management a innovative culture and team working and ethical behaviour is
demanded. So to enhance the learning experience the learner must learn through team working
and peer to peer support to enhance the communication and collaborative skills towards the
others.
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References:
Books and Journals
Aguiar-Quintana, T., Araujo-Cabrera, Y. and Park, S., 2020. The sequential relationships of
hotel employees' perceived justice, commitment, and organizational citizenship
behaviour in a high unemployment context. Tourism Management Perspectives. 35.
p.100676.
Babaei, G. and Bamdad, S., 2020. A multi-objective instance-based decision support system for
investment recommendation in peer-to-peer lending. Expert Systems with
Applications. 150. p.113278.
Botha, J., 2021. I think I can, I know I can? Success orientation in adult learner academic self-
directedness. South African Journal of Higher Education. 35(2). pp.42-55.
Chen, H., Park, H.W. and Breazeal, C., 2020. Teaching and learning with children: Impact of
reciprocal peer learning with a social robot on children’s learning and emotive
engagement. Computers & Education. 150. p.103836.\
Geier, M.T., 2021. Students’ expectations and students’ satisfaction: The mediating role of
excellent teacher behaviors. Teaching of Psychology. 48(1). pp.9-17.
Huang, A and et. al., 2020. Understanding the impact of COVID-19 intervention policies on the
hospitality labor market. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 91.
p.102660.
Klyver, K., Schenkel, M.T. and Nielsen, M.S., 2020. Can’t always get what I want: Cultural
expectations of emotional support in entrepreneurship. International Small Business
Journal. 38(7). pp.677-690.
Lachman, N., 2020. Giving feedback to students. In Teaching Anatomy (pp. 173-183). Springer,
Cham.
Liu, M.T and et. al., 2021. Taking a break is for accomplishing a longer journey: hospitality
industry in Macao under the COVID-19 pandemic. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Mackintosh-Franklin, C., 2021. An evaluation of formative feedback and its impact on
undergraduate student nurse academic achievement. Nurse Education in Practice. 50.
p.102930.
Magano, J and et. al., 2021. Validation and psychometric properties of the Portuguese version of
the Coronavirus Anxiety Scale (CAS) and fear of COVID-19 Scale (FCV-19S) and
associations with travel, tourism and hospitality. International Journal of
Environmental Research and Public Health. 18(2). p.427.
Mazzetti, G and et. al., 2020. The Impact of Learning Strategies and Future Orientation on
Academic Success: The Moderating Role of Academic Self-Efficacy among Italian
Undergraduate Students. Education Sciences. 10(5). p.134.
Robbins, S.E., 2021. Team learning as boundary crossing: incubating collaboration. Human
Resource Development International. 24(3). pp.304-328.
Smith, C., 2021. How does the medium affect the message? Architecture students’ perceptions of
the relative utility of different feedback methods. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher
Education. 46(1). pp.54-67.
Walker, E.R and et. al., 2020. Role of team dynamics in the learning process: a mixed-methods
evaluation of a modified team-based learning approach in a behavioral research
methods course. Advances in Health Sciences Education. 25(2). pp.383-399.
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