E Portfolio and Reflection

Introduction

My passion for journalism got sparked at the age of 16 when I saw a journalist in our school. Since then it has been grown with the time. My love for the journalism has been encouraged me to take up Mass communication as a professional course. With the time I have learnt that it is a job which is very demanding but it cannot stop me. This is because journalism is not just a profession but it is holding the humanity together. Another thing that attracted me toward journalism is that it gives an ample of opportunities to meet different people having different stories. It is an incredible experience in itself. In this university I have already completed one semester.

Today a journalist has countless opportunities to work in different areas of journalism. Print media and electronic media are the two category of journalism. Reporter, leader writer, editor, critic are the few options which have been giving plenty of goals and plans for me.

In this semester, I have been gained command over the rhetorical, technical writing and presentation skills of mine. Management, communication and leadership are the few other things that I have been learnt in my journalism classes (Pretorius and Ford., 2016).

Today scenario have been got changed with the time. Student like us has to take journalism education seriously.  Today just studying journalism is not enough but we have to learn about technical tools that are being used in fast moving world.  That is the reason a multimedia curriculum has to be changed frequently.

Reflection On My learning

As per the theory of Honey and Mumford Learning Styles, every person is Activist, Theorist, Pragmatist, or Reflector by nature. There is just a need to understand the nature of a person. Motive behind understanding the type of learner is to help us in making learning more enjoyable and more effective (Bennett et al.,2016). After completing the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles, I scored highest in reflector and second highest in theorist. From this it can be concluded that strength and learning preferences must be based on reflector and theorist. However, I will be comparatively weaker in accepting the traits of these two learning style that are activist and pragmatists.

Selecting a career is always a challenging phase for a student. So same was with me. Even I do not know from where I should start. I was really in confused state of mind. Since I am a reflector and writing is one of the good strength of a reflector. So I am really fond of writing and reading. Today I have completed my Ist semester of the course and ready to start with another. This was hard on me because I was totally unaware about the skills and attribute required for this profession. I was also confused about the duration. Before joining my Ist semester of my course I want to work upon my strength and weaknesses. I personally believe that strength of a person has been always helped a person in succeeding in his or her professional life. Since I am reflector I like to listen my colleagues before concluding the things.  After self-analysis I found that communication and team leader are the two important strength of mine..  Before joining this course, I was working in a hotel as a manager.  There I was able to communicate effectively with the guest and all other staff of the hotel. Every day I used to conduct various meetings along with morning briefing. Verbal communication plays very important role in my job profile. My team never had any misunderstanding in communication (Doulik et al.,2017).

Another strength that I have found in myself is the team leader quality in me. While working in that hotel, I realized that I can easily regulate the roles and responsibility of an individual. That is why I have always succeeded there in coordinating the every jobs to concentrates on the upcoming task and objectives. Many times I have handled various critical issues and resolved the same with smartness. In real sense, true leader is that only which can quickly assess the problem and can also fix them with same speed. While working in the hotel I have realized that to command others or to give instructions is not only responsibility of team leader (Husmann and O'Loughlin., 2019).

Possible weakness that I have noticed in myself being a reflector is that sometime I failed to plan according to the time. Like in last semester, I took extra two months to complete my assignment as I was little extra cautious about the matter to be concluded.  Being weaker in activist learning style, I need an action plan work out on me so that I should learn to have fun in the group discussions (Reynolds, et al., . 2020)

Reflection on Group Work

With the experience I have learnt that when you have to perform in group then responsibility of everyone must be clear. As per the Belbin theory, it is must for every member to understand their role in the team so that strength and the weakness of the team can be managed. Belbin team role questionnaire has been helping in understanding the team member in determining their own individual strength. Along with this test it gives idea about the position of an individual in the team. Through the result of this test let me know about my personality. Result of the test revealed that I will be “implanter” for the group. I was an individual who has to generate ideas for the team. I attained similar scores in coordinator. In other six roles I have got evenly spread scores. As per the Belbin theory there must be 9 team roles. This does not mean that one should have nine members in the team. Members in the group have to acquire more than one role. Everyone was little excited to take up the role as per the belbin team role theory (Bhatnagar and Sinha ., 2018) .

Belbin team role test confirmed that in our group is a blend of implanter, coordinator, leader, monitor evaluator, complete finisher, team worker and resource investigator. As discussed above we have only four members in the group so we can perform well by identifying the strength and weakness of each other. We also checked the results of learning style questionnaire of every member. We found that one of the members of our group found to be an activist that means she can express his feelings anywhere and everywhere.

From this group task, I learnt that how every member of the team can make contribution towards the completion of task. It was a class of management skills in semester 1. In week 7, Mr. Alex allocated a task to our group.  We were four members in this group. Choice for the place was given to us that is whether it can be library or classroom. Time limit was set to complete the task. In order to perform well, we all have given test seriously. As a result of the test, we have taken the specific roles accordingly. Our tutor has provided us resources. Every member of the team was working with full dedication. Our group was given the task to create a power point presentation on exploring management skills in order to find out their importance. We finally presented final presentation after working together on the various stages like research and compilation of first draft. I realized that every member of the group has contributed equally on every stage of the task. This is because specific roles have been given to ever one. Like a leader in our team was guiding and observing. Another task of the leader is to keep the team member in high spirit. On the same front, leader has opted for other role also in the team. Like Leader of our team was also playing the role of monitor evaluator. Monitor evaluator is the one who had to evaluate all options before concluding the things. I have also opted for another role that is definite-coordinator (Sudira et al.,2018).

Being a definite coordinator, I took in-charge of the team and allocated the task accordingly to the other members. In this way entire task of preparing a ppt completed smoothly and efficiently. This experience made me learn that members in the team do not make it successful. Their coordination, trust, understanding and effective communication between them make a team successful. Our faith in each other was the only thing which let us finished our task on time. Best thing in our group was that our all members were working cohesively by keeping their individualistic motives aside. There were some disagreements among the team members but later on we resolved the problem amicably. Along with this, there was a pressure that our team must not reach up to break- up. Thus it is mandatory that our team to keep its team spirit and motivation high (Omar et al., 2016).  

While working with the team I found that effective communication is must for the performance of the group. I analyzed that communication between the team members is being affected due to individual characteristics of the members. Nevertheless, we resolved the issue of communication gradually through encouragement and open communication. This team work experience has taught me that each team cannot have members of every characteristic. This is the reason any team cannot be perfect. Every team has its own strength and weaknesses which need to be work upon as per the requirement (Bednár and Ljudvigová .,2020.).

Reflection on Performance

My first semester is about to end by this week. This week is going to be very hectic one.  Being a student, I have to work upon the things which have to be completed yet. I always consider this last week of the semester as an opportunity to analyze the threat and weaknesses. This self-analysis can only help me in taking the actions to convert them into strength and successes. We have to make lots of efforts and spend lots of time in order to complete our degree from the university. So in simple terms it can be said that last week of the semester is a new beginning for me (Naqvi et al.,2018)

I have learnt that just completing the task or project on time cannot help a student like us. Sometime it pushes students towards surface learning strategies. Thus it can be said that if lack of the time was not the real cause of the low performance then more time will not work out for the same.  So I thought of measure my productive time instead of just measuring the time. That is why it is mandatory for a student to focus on its productive time rather than on increasing the time for general things. Along, with this, I have planned other option that they must learn study skill.  I have felt that through study skill I have developed my own approach to complete my last semester. Through these study skills have been enabled me to get the understanding that what will work for me and what will not. The key point about the study skill is that it is not subject specific. I have used it while studying generally area. In last semester, we were introduced to challenges, rigors and opportunities are available in the journalism profession. In last semester through study skills, I have got managed to work upon my communication skills. In profession of journalism, a good communication skills are mandatory one especially in writing.  This semester of the course has been designed in a way that we are totally engaged in group discussions. Three classes were being conducted in a week. These study skills have been helped me in increasing my ability for self-regulated learning’s. The term Self-regulated is being used for the stage of the student like us where we can regulate our thinking and behavior while learning. These study skills have been helped me a lot in this semester.  In this semester I have also learned about the multiple forms of writing by writing content of the journal of my college . These different style of writing has been helped me to become better writer.

In above reflection I have just mentioned that what have I learned from my learnings. Or how was the group performance? I have not discussed about the weaknesses and threats about myself. Still there are some weakness and threats in me that need to be worked upon. This semester has been proved eye opener for me. While completing this year I have been get to know the complexity and hard-working is required for the profession. In this semester I have strengthened my interpersonal skills and strategic thinking but still I have to work upon my communication skills and predictive analysis. Communication skills and critical thinking are the two critical things which may directly affect my profession of journalism. Along with this I need to improve my public speaking skills. These of two weaknesses of mine may create hurdle in the path of my career. My lecturer’s feedback about my weaknesses was that I need to brush up on these two skills. In this way these two can becomes strength for me in my next semester. Though I tried to learn both of the skill and subject in last year but could not get effective results. After identifying my weakness, I have also planned for action plan. In this action plan, I would have to check that what effective actions should be planned to transform these weaknesses of mine. However, I will ensure that planned actions have been proving beneficial or not to me. This semester was packed with uncertain challenges but still I can say that I have put my best efforts to get highest grades in this.

References

Pretorius, L. and Ford, A., 2016. Reflection for Learning: Teaching Reflective Practice at the Beginning of University Study. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education28(2), pp.241-253.

Bennett, D., Power, A., Thomson, C., Mason, B. and Bartleet, B.L., 2016. Reflection for learning, learning for reflection: Developing Indigenous competencies in higher education. Journal of University teaching & learning practice13(2), p.7.

Doulik, P., Skoda, J. and Simonova, I., 2017. Learning styles in the e-learning environment: the approaches and research on longitudinal changes. International Journal of Innovation and Learning21(4), pp.417-434.

Reynolds, Q.J., Gilliland, K.O., Smith, K., Walker, J.A. and Dallaghan, G.L.B., 2020. Differences in medical student performance on examinations: exploring score variance between Kolb's Learning Style Inventory classifications. BMC Medical Education20(1), pp.1-7.

Husmann, P.R. and O'Loughlin, V.D., 2019. Another nail in the coffin for learning styles? Disparities among undergraduate anatomy students’ study strategies, class performance, and reported VARK learning styles. Anatomical sciences education12(1), pp.6-19.

Bhatnagar, T. and Sinha, V., 2018. Learning styles: a comparison between Indian and German business students. Journal of International Students8(1), pp.473-487.

Sudira, P.G., Damayanti, M.R., Yusari, I., Pinatih, K.J.P. and Samatra, D.P.G.P., 2018. Comparison of Learning Style Preferences Among First Year Medical and Dental Students in Udayana University. Advanced Science Letters24(9), pp.6446-6448.

Omar, M., Hasan, B., Ahmad, M., Yasin, A., Baharom, F., Mohd, H. and Muhd Darus, N., 2016. Applying fuzzy technique in software team formation based on Belbin team role. Journal of Telecommunication, Electronic and Computer Engineering8(8), pp.109-113.

Bednár, R. and Ljudvigová, I., 2020. Belbin team roles in a start-up team. In SHS Web of Conferences (Vol. 83, p. 01002). EDP Sciences.

Naqvi, S., Chikwa, G., Menon, U. and Al Kharusi, D., 2018. Study skills assessment among undergraduate students at a private university college in Oman. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences9(2), p.139.

Villarreal, V. and Martinez, A., 2018. Assessing study skills in college students: A review of three measures. Journal of College Student Development59(5), pp.629-635.


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