Reflective Report: Developing Employability and Study Skills

This report is a reflective journal detailing a student's university experience, utilizing Gibbs' Reflective Cycle to analyze the development of employability and study skills. The report covers a group project on "Professional Development Skills," where the student volunteered as a team leader. The reflection includes descriptions of the experience, feelings during the project, evaluation of strengths and weaknesses (such as communication and ICT skills), analysis of the learning process, a conclusion on personal and professional growth, and an action plan to address identified weaknesses. The student reflects on improved time management, problem-solving, and research skills, while also acknowledging the need to enhance communication, networking, and ICT proficiency for future professional endeavors. The report emphasizes the importance of self-reflection for continuous personal and professional development.

Personal and Professional
Development (Reflective
report)

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Gibbs Reflective cycle framework..............................................................................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
References:.......................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Professional and personal development is the process of developing skills, capabilities
and knowledge of a individual to carry out necessary actions for the particular job role. Effective
personal and professional development helps an individual to understand the area of expertise in
particular career path (Tanaka, Okamoto and Koide, 2018). For this particular concept there
includes a activity called personal reflection which lens a person a concept to think deeply about
the own skills, feelings, strengths, weaknesses and opinions. For the self reflection analysis there
is the framework called Gibbs reflective cycle that helps an individual in analysing the
experiences of the particular event or activity in repeated format. This model is tool of reflection
writing on the specific experience, incident by writing down the feelings, thoughts and ideas in
structured format. The present report is the reflective journal on the experience of student
attending university using the Gibbs reflective cycle to represent the contribution of the
achievements of the development of employability and study skills.
MAIN BODY
Gibbs Reflective cycle framework
The Gibbs reflective model is the tool to demonstrate the self reflection on particular
event or experience published by the famous American Sociologist Graham Gibbs. There is huge
importance of this framework in thinking the systematically and precisely about the experience
of the student while attending the university for the learning and development of the skills and
knowledge (Delves-Yates, 2021). The model is cyclic in nature which contains of six different
stages in the cyclic format that circulates the thinking of the individual in all direction of the
circle of the experience. I am using this reflective writing model to analyse and evaluate my
experience of attending the university and its lecturers to recognise my employability and study
skills. Through this reflective cycle I will be gaining self awareness of my actions during my
experience. The six stages of the Gibbs reflective cycle are outlined underneath:
Stage 1: Description: This is the initial phase of reflective writing and is termed to be most
descriptive one because in this I will be answering serious of question to describe my whole
experience without drawing any conclusion of the same. Through this stage I will be describing
my whole experience of attending the lectures at university in detail. In this stage I will answer
question like what happened, where happened, who all where involved, what I do and much
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more. I am currently a student of the university for completion of my graduation degree. In
university there are different classes on different subjects related to my opted degree course.
There is the lecture class on the employability and study skills where the teachers taught
different subjects using different teaching methods. Along with the theoretical learning in the
university I am also provided with the practical learning experience. Once in the lecture the
teacher provided us a assessment which was a group project and has to be in form of digital
presentation. The topic for the project was “ Professional Development Skills”. The teacher gave
the deadline of 10 days and 7 members where allotted to each team. I volunteered myself to
become leader of my team as I never experienced myself as the team leader. For the project me
and my team members conducted the research and survey of professionals of different arena to
gather the information on professional skills for development. In this this whole project I have
experienced the challenges as well as the smooth working.
Stage 2: Feelings: At this phase I will be reflecting on my feelings that I have activated while
been part of the project as the leader. In the beginning of the project I was highly excited and
encouraged to lead the team members and the project in the right direction to gain best grades in
the assessment. In between of the project I experienced a mismanagement of the work due to my
weak communication skills which created the challenges for me in organising and managing the
work of teammates as well as mine. I felt that this project is highly useful for me to learn and
develop some key employability and study skills that will help me grow as professional. I also
felt happy and satisfied in the end of the project and also my overall felling where mixture of
good and bad experience.
Stage: 3 Evaluation- the stage where I will be evaluating my actions during the project working
thereby recognising my strengths and weaknesses. I evaluated that I have lack of
communication skills because in between of the project there was huge mismanagement of the
work due to my this weakness of skill. In addition to this when I was making digital presentation
and was required to make tables and figures to represent survey results I faced difficulty in that
due to my lack of ICTs skills. There was the time when team members were facing issues and
conflicts with each other because of differentiation of perspectives and opinions . But there I
realized that with my expertise and potential of resolving issue the conflicts were resolved
quickly. This represented my strength of good problem solving skills. During the working on
survey and research I evaluated that I have effective research skills and knowledge. I am also
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skilled with different research methods. In the end of the project I evaluated that due to my weak
team working management and networking skills and also during the whole project was not
able to make bonds or networks with my teammates. I realized that I was able to meet all the
deadlines of the project this highlighted that I have excellent time and self management skills.
Stage 4: Analysis- It is analysed that the completion of the whole project is life long experience
for me as a leader. I have analysed that my strengths have helped me throughout the completion
of the project in gaining outstanding performance as an individual, as a leader and team member.
I have also analysed that this project has given me many opportunities to learn some new
employability skills among which most important skill that I have learned is the leadership skills.
But I have also analysed that I have experienced some bad experiences due to my weaknesses
that must be improved in order to avoid future consequences.
Stage 5: Conclusion- it is concluded from the above report that my above reflection on the team
project on the professional development skills that increased my learning on different
employability skills. I have also analysed my key strengths and weaknesses. From the whole
experience of the leading the team and from completing the project I was able to make sure that I
am able to grow professionally and personally. It is highly observed that I have very sharp time
and self management skills due to which I remain in organised manner also due to this team
members work was allocated in best way. In future if the same opportunity comes to me I will
work improvise my work with better interaction to grow my networks and also to have better
team working.
Stage 6: Action plan- the action plan is the structured plan to develop my weaknesses that I
have analysed during the whole project completion. My communication skills are my key
weaknesses that must me improved in order to grow professionally and personally. To improve
communication skills I will interact with people, read more books and journals for better written
communication skills. To improve my lack of ICT s skills I will refer you tube videos and and
also join the computer classes to learn all the ICTs skills in upgraded manner. To improve my
networking and team working skills I will learn to develop some key behaviours that will make
me more team member and also I will work on my leadership skills.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that for an individual to gain personal and
professional development for the growth in career it is very important have self reflection skills.
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For the effective self analysis the there are different models among which Gibbs effective cycle
is effective tool because of its cyclic nature. It is concluded that for the professional development
every individual has to work on its employability and study skills. Among all the key skills the
communication skills are highly essential for personal and professional development.
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References:
Books and Journals
Borg, A., 2018, June. Fire investigation as learning tool. In Book of Proceedings (p. 119).
Delves-Yates, C., 2021. Beginner′ s Guide to Reflective Practice in Nursing. SAGE.
Miner, A. and Nicodemus, B., 2021. Situated Authentic Interpreting. In Situated Learning in
Interpreter Education (pp. 103-123). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Niaz, H.F. and Mistry, J.R., 2021. Twelve tips for being an effective clinical skills peer teacher.
Medical Teacher, 43(9), pp.1019-1024.
Smith, E.R., 2020. Techniques for mentors to support early career teachers' reflective practice.
Teaching Geography, 45(2), pp.53-55.
Tanaka, M., Okamoto, R. and Koide, K., 2018. Relationship between Reflective Practice Skills
and Volume of Writing in a Reflective Journal. Health, 10(3), pp.283-288.
Williams, K., Woolliams, M. and Spiro, J., 2020. Reflective writing. Red Globe Press.
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