Reflective Learning and Assessment in Higher Education Success

This essay explores the significance of reflective learning in higher education, emphasizing its role in personal development and effective task performance. It delves into the concept of reflective learning, highlighting its ability to help students learn from past experiences and improve project management skills. The essay utilizes Gibbs' reflective model to analyze experiences, incorporating feedback and feed-forward techniques to enhance formative and summative assessments. It discusses the differences between feedback, which reviews past performance, and feed-forward, which offers constructive direction for future improvement. The study concludes that reflective learning, combined with effective feedback mechanisms, is crucial for students to identify strengths and weaknesses, thereby fostering self-awareness, motivation, and ultimately, success in their academic pursuits. This document is available on Desklib, a platform offering a range of study tools and solved assignments for students.

Orientation for Success
in Higher Education

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
Books and Journals:....................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
The reflection defines one of the most key features of an individual personality
development which necessitates to have pivotal skills and ongoing learning with a purpose to
make the person to perform tasks in the most efficient way. The concept of reflective learning
comprises looking back at something, an idea, learning or past experience and critically examine
the event. By visualizing successful and unsuccessful aspects of the learning or experience,
reflection will assist and guide pupils to learn from their past experiences and make a room for
the learning in a more deep way (Arkoudis and et.al., 2019). Addition to this, learning supports
the students to manage projects and assessments, along with work. With the help of this, the
student is also able to measure personal learning behaviour as well as strong and weak areas.
This will also support in higher education learning. Tutors and teachers also provide feedback on
their student's performance in context of issues or difficulties they are facing in the current
projects. They also cater various kinds of working patterns. As a part of this assignment, Gibbs
model is used to reflect the experiences. It is also covered with reflective approach to feedback
as well as feed-forward, while demonstrating how this can inform and enhance summative and
formative assessments (Cohen and Jody, 2019). The feedback is indulge to the scholar's actual
performance while, feed-forward caters constructive direction to perform productive. At the end,
this assignment will also highlight various methods for giving enhancement in formative,
together with summative assessment (Weber, Becker and Hillmert,2019).
MAIN BODY
The word “reflection” denotes the analysis of individual's skills, learning or experiences
that not only create goodness in handling but also in gaining knowledge. It is addressed as
significant method as it helps in learning professional knowledge while building self-confidence
in individuals. It also supports in creating self-awareness. In 1998, the reflective model was
introduced by Graham Gibbs. It involves a reflective cycle to an individual to reflect on the
learning or experience that he or she had in past (Corneille and et.al., 2019). With the help of this
model, various kinds of ways and methods is being measured that helps a person in analysing
things that are working well or not. The Gibbs reflective cycle is covered with six different
stages such as description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, along with action plan.
Description is the first stage in the reflective cycle in which a person is aim to describe the

situation with accurate details such as what circumstances or situations were and when was the
time, at what place, what were its results or any thing that is happened or occurred in the past
(Tratnik, Urh and Jereb, 2019). There is the application of all the details of circumstances which
was happened in the learning. The second stage is considered as feelings, in which a person
demonstrating the whole feelings which is held in the learning and experience (Halberstadt and
et.al., 2019). He or she evaluate the feelings what created happiness, joy or fun or what things
resulted in sadness or fear. This stage caters all the inner thoughts and feelings which runs in the
mind of individual during the performance of activity or task. In the reflective cycle, the
evaluation is the third stage in which all the positive and negative features are situation are
addressed and assessed. The person evaluates the situation in managing and looking for the areas
where development or improvement is required. The reason is also evaluated due to which they
faced difficulties or challenges in the situation (Harrell and Capco, 2021). Analysis is the
succeeding phase in which the person gets a chance to sense all the events or happenings. With
the help of this, they can easily reframe and understands all the happenings in context to
loopholes due to which things were not gone well. Conclusion is the stage in which summaries
of activities, actions and learning is mentioned. The final phase is the action plan which is taken
as the most crucial and significant phase in the reflective cycle (Symaco and Tee, 2019). At this
time, the person prepares an action plan to do activities and tasks in forthcoming time so that
areas of lacking is developed and improved. Hence, this supports in the development of
knowledge, skills and abilities of that individual.
The feedback defines as the review of performance of an individual which is provided on
some situation or work is done by the person. Feedback are generally indulged by experts,
teachers, tutors, seniors who have intense knowledge in performing tasks. Students gets the
information in terms of feedback about their behaviour or performance. It can be positive or
negative feedback on the individual's performance (Irons and Elkington, 2021). On the other
side, the feed-forward is dissimilar to the process of feedback. With the help of feed-forward, the
person is able to replace the job that they perform with an intent to handle the work while
attaining good management to accomplish future goals. This process is future-oriented to cater
solutions or options, rather than just giving positive or negative feedback. This also can be taken
as the plan that the leader caters to his or her subordinate to manage all of their situations while
conquering all the difficulties that they face (Sarker and et.al., 2019). Gibbs reflective cycle can

effectively help the person to analyse the situation from both favourable and unfavourable
perspectives. As it is exploited in the ending phase, the feed is also ascertained as the important
part in that reflective cycle. Individuals may promptly assess the and make objectives and plan to
manage work in valid and appropriate way (Kleiber and Kirshnit, 2019). In the last stage, the
exploitation of feed-forward has been represented to help in reflection while preparing for close
events. Resulting, the job will manage in an effective way while vital approaches are applied.
Addition to this, the person can exploit the reflective cycle in usual working areas to obtain
various sets of feedback so that better acknowledgement can be done (Knapper and Cropley,
2021). The feed-forward helps in the management of forthcoming situations that is also
addressed as vital portion.
Both feedback and feed-forward are considered as the important methods through which
individual issues or problems can be resolved effectively. By sensing and measuring all the
favourable and unfavourable perspectives at work, the person can concentrate on their concerns.
Developing and managing is considered as the prior element in higher education as it helps
individuals to be more concentrated and attentive at all tasks and events so that individuals can
succeed effectively, as well as, their formative and summative assessments can be done in the
systematic way. Feedback also helps in building motivation level among students. When tutors
praise and give positive feedback to their student's hard work will help in motivating people.
Whereas, the new ideas are improved through feedback and evaluated to resolve the concerns.
The skills and knowledge of student's are enhanced by continuous concentrate on the working
and effectiveness (Morrison, 2019). The execution of feed-forward aids in giving various
measures through which they can simply face challenges during the projects or tasks. The
individuals can make their job better by creation of such strategies. In the summative and
formative feedback, the ideas, together with hard of students are shown (Wei and Chou, 2020). It
also helps student to gain self-awareness and boosted confidence level to complete work in the
most efficient way. Feedback also helps in increasing effectiveness as it enables students to push
their boundaries in doing jobs (Pavlović and Maksić, 2019). The vital component feed-forward
is also regarded as it supports in future development of individuals. It also focus on the formative
and summative assignments properly. Therefore, it is essential for the senior to indulge feedback
and feed-forward on regular basis so that student can command on his or her actions.

CONCLUSION
From the above study, it has been concluded that reflective learning is determined as the
most significant technique through which individuals can acquire effective learning ways by
knowing strengths and weak areas. Gibbs model is considered in the report that aids in
acknowledging various steps of individual experience of learning. It is also outlined with
feedback and feed-forward techniques as both are important for the student's performance.
Feedback is indulge on present performance while feed-forward is based on the future-oriented
solutions. Later, it also addressed the value of formative and summative assessment which
supports an individual in accomplishing future aspirations.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Arkoudis, S. and et.al., 2019. International students’ experience in Australian higher education:
can we do better?. Higher Education, 77(5), pp.799-813.
Cohen, R.D. and Jody, R., 2019. Freshman Seminar: A New Orientation: A New Orientation.
Routledge.
Corneille, M. and et.al., 2019. Barriers to the advancement of women of color faculty in STEM:
The need for promoting equity using an intersectional framework. Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion: An International Journal.
Halberstadt, J. and et.al., 2019. Skills and knowledge management in higher education: how
service learning can contribute to social entrepreneurial competence
development. Journal of Knowledge Management.
Harrell, C. and Capco, D.G., 2021. The Orientation of First-Year Students to Success:
Recognizing the Need for Change. In The STEM Pathway and Student Retention (pp.
21-24). Springer, Cham.
Irons, A. and Elkington, S., 2021. Enhancing learning through formative assessment and
feedback. Routledge.
Kleiber, D.A. and Kirshnit, C.E., 2019. Sport involvement and identity formation. In Mind-body
maturity (pp. 193-212). Taylor & Francis.
Knapper, C.K. and Cropley, A.J., 2021. Lìelong Learning in Higher Education. Routledge.
Morrison, J.C., 2019. Redefining the Morehouse man: Sexual orientation and gender identity at
Morehouse College in the wake of Spelman's decision to accept transwomen. J. Gender
Race & Just., 22, p.79.
Pavlović, J. and Maksić, S., 2019. Implicit theories of creativity in higher education: A
constructivist study. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 32(3), pp.254-273.
Sarker, M.F.H. and et.al., 2019. Use of e-learning at higher educational institutions in
Bangladesh: Opportunities and challenges. Journal of Applied Research in Higher
Education.
Symaco, L.P. and Tee, M.Y., 2019. Social responsibility and engagement in higher education:
Case of the ASEAN. International Journal of Educational Development, 66, pp.184-
192.
Tratnik, A., Urh, M. and Jereb, E., 2019. Student satisfaction with an online and a face-to-face
Business English course in a higher education context. Innovations in education and
teaching international, 56(1), pp.36-45.
Weber, H., Becker, D. and Hillmert, S., 2019. Information-seeking behaviour and academic
success in higher education: Which search strategies matter for grade differences among
university students and how does this relevance differ by field of study?. Higher
Education, 77(4), pp.657-678.
Wei, H.C. and Chou, C., 2020. Online learning performance and satisfaction: do perceptions and
readiness matter?. Distance Education, 41(1), pp.48-69.