REFLECTIVE WRITING EXERCISE

Below are four excerpts from some examples of reflective writing. None of them is perfect.
Following involvement in student-led training sessions, the writers have been asked to reflect on:

 Their “Technical subject learning” about the Systematic Training Cycle (STC) and learning
theories

 Their “Skills development” as facilitators of learning

 Their “Personal learning” related to learning theories

TASK:

Individually, identify the strengths and weaknesses of each, indicating how you would improve
each example. In pairs compare your answers and summarise “best practice” in reflective writing.

Example 1.

My group was given the task of teaching Training Needs Analysis (TNA). We did not pick our own
groups, people were allocated which I felt was unfair, because I would have preferred to work
with my mates; we all think the same and so work together better. We took quite a long time to
get started because we all kept missing meetings, some people would turn up and others
wouldn’t. When we did all finally get together we argued a lot about who was going to do what.
Finally we decided we would all research different things and we went off to do this own our own.
Sam had to look at the reasons for doing a TN because there are lots of them. Jo got the different
techniques of doing a TNA which turned out to be a big topic as well. Alex was looking for case
study examples which we had decided would be good for the session, and I got the challenges and
pitfalls of doing a TNA. I spent hours looking at text books trying to come up with information,
there were so many different text books that I decided to only look at ones printed post 2000.
When we met up to share our research, it was very clear that some people had not done very
much, they just brought a few scraps of paper with a list of internet sites they had looked at, I
thought anyone could have done that and wished I had not worked so hard. What I have leant
from this is that I should pick my own group and be careful how much effort I put
in…………………………………… (cont)

Bloom, B.S. (1965) A Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, McKay, New York

Marchington, M. and Wilkinson, A. (2002) People Management and Development, CIPD, London

Simmonds, D. Designing and Delivering Training, CIPD, London

Example 2.

Learning about training design and facilitation

Assignment groups were appointed by the lecturer and topics were allocated. I felt uncomfortable
about this, I would have preferred to do an individual assignment or choose my own group.
However I recognised that this was part of the challenge, in a work situation people have to work
in teams and seldom have the freedom to select their own work groups (Katzenbach & Smith
1993). Analysing my discomfort I realised that I preferred to work with my mates due to the
similarities in our personalities. All of my mates had similar profiles in the five key dimensions of
personality (French et al 2008, Huczynski & Buchanan 2007) which indicates that we are likely to
work in similar ways. Whilst this can be comfortable, it is not necessarily the best way to get high
performance, as highlighted by the research into team roles (Aritzeta et al 2005). In our group I
would guess we had all of the Belbin team roles represented (Belbin Associates 2002) which
probably resulted in a much better presentation, but the journey to achieving it was not easy, as I
will discuss later under the heading of managing conflict. When beginning work with new groups
in the future I intend to have a discussion about team roles early on, so that we can make use of
and value the differences amongst team members………………..(cont)

Aritzeta, A. Swailes, S. Senior, B. (2005) Team Roles: psychometric evidence, construct validity and
team building. Research memorandum. CMOL. University of Hull

Belbin Associates (2002) www.belbin.com

French, R. Rayner, C. Rees, G. Rumbles, S. (2008). Organisational behaviour. Chichester, Wiley

Huczynski, A. and Buchanan, D. (2007) Organisational behaviour. Harlow, Pearson.

Katzenbach, J & Smith, D (1993) The Wisdom of Teams. Maidenhead, McGraw-Hill

Example 3

Learning about Delivery of training and facilitation skills

For our topic, training delivery, some materials were provided by the lecturer. I was expecting to
go away and read/research the topic, which was worrying because I work full-time and studying at
University is a new experience for me. I do not have a first degree so academic work sometimes
makes me feel uncomfortable and I was not happy to tell the others in case they thought I was
stupid. So for me, having the materials was a real help because I could read through and digest it
knowing it was the right information. After the group-led session we received feedback and the
lecturer said I could improve on my understanding of the theory, this upset me because I felt that I
had read lots about it before we presented but I was so nervous on the day my mind went blank.
In addition the other students said the group could have done more facilitation and less
presenting. I have thought about why these things happened and decided that perhaps being
given the materials was not such a good idea, as I read about the topics on the slides but did not
read into the background. The guidance given meant I did not have to think about the content or
structure and that made me lazy. Adults learn best by taking an active part in their learning, which
I did not really do. If I had been involved in the planning and decision-making about what to
include in the training session I would be more connected to the material. I can see now, that this
also meant we did too much giving information in our session and did not involve the trainees
enough, they were adult learners and therefore we should have facilitated more and presented
less. Despite feeling unhappy about the feedback, the next week at work my boss asked me to run
a session for the new HR Director about how we indentify training needs in our business. I spent
some time agreeing a learning objective, with my boss, for the session (Mager 2000) and then
decided to include an activity to test this at the end. What really amazed me was how I was able
to put the session together without referring back to many materials from University, for example
I remembered all about reactive and proactive TNA, different techniques such as key task,
comprehensive, problem centred etc. so I guess I must have a much deeper level of learning about
this topic than I thought. I did feel nervous on the day of the presentation, but after I had opened
up with some questions about what the HR director already knew, the nerves disappeared and at
the end my boss said well done and I smiled all day! What I will take away from this experience, is
that deep level learning requires an investment in time and effort, and different techniques have
to be used when you are designing training events..... (cont)
Example 4

Learning about Evaluation of training and facilitation skills

Delivering a training session on training evaluation has proven to be enlightening on many levels.
In order to teach others our group agreed we needed to become expert in the subject matter
(May and Kruger 1988) which involved deep level learning (Entwhistle, Thompson & Tait 1992).
What we had not appreciated is the time and effort that this would take to achieve and we were
not able to handle all of the questions raised by our trainees. This learning is something I have
already used at work. The senior management team wanted all managers to attend a short
briefing session in readiness for the roll out of a new self-service HR system. But I have managed
to convince them that if they want the managers to effectively use the system, they will need a
much deeper level of learning which will entail more in-depth training. One of the ways that I
managed to convince the senior managers was by carrying out a more thorough TNA, using a
comprehensive analysis technique (Buckley & Caple 2008). This was a technique I learned about in
the first student-led session. I then linked the TNA to training evaluation by asking the senior
managers, as key stakeholders, to identify the measurable outcomes they would expect of the
training, so that I could produce return on investment (ROI) data (Buckley & Caple 2008) or return
on expectation (ROE) data (Kearns 2006), after the training had finished. I was fascinated to
discover that the TNA process provided some very clear training objectives aligned to those
described by Mager (2000), this was something I learned in the second student-led session. What
I had not picked up from their session was how valuable these objectives can be when deciding
the content of a training session. When I went back to my notes on this training session I realised
that a handout had been given on this, but I had not remembered this. I realised that this is an
example of my preferred learning style........ (Cont)

Mager, R (2000) What every manager should know about training, Chalfont, Management Books

Entwistle, N., Thompson, S., and Tait, H. (1992) ‘Guidelines for promoting effective learning in
higher education’, Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction

May, G.D. and Kruger, M.J. (1988) The Manager Within, Personnel Journal Vol 67 (2)

Buckley, Roger. & Caple, Jim. (2008). The Thoery & Practice of Training. London. Kogan Page.

Kearns P (2006) Evaluating the ROI from learning: how to develop value based training CIPD