Final Entry on An introduction to skills development and the Warwick Skills Portfolio
Original Action Points:
- To commit myself to completing the further workshops and applying what I learn to my everyday life.
- To apply the skills and techniques highlighted in situations outside my comfort zone and become more flexible and adaptable.
- To improve my self reflection by listening to feeback from others and use of structured self assessment.
On reflection, after an extremely busy second term, I still managed to commit myself to further workshops such as 'an Introduction to Academic Writing at Masters Level', 'Leading a Group Project' and most recently the Warwick Leadership scheme. The majority of workshops I found consolidated my knowledge and learning so far, such as the structure and presentation of writing highlighted in the 'Introduction to Academic Writing at Masters Level' workshop. But I also found some interesting and new ideas such as the Belbin theory and Myers-Briggs type indicators from the 'Working in a Team' and 'Leadership' program. These assessments I found accurately portrayed my preferred roles within a team and the leadership style which suits me best and furthered my understanding the most. Understanding of the different roles it is possible to play in group work helped me to identify with different working styles and provide reasons why as a co-ordinator, teamworker and resource investigator I might clash with strong shapers that provide drive and are not afraid to tread on people's toes doing so.
In terms of applying the skills and techniques highlighted in this workshop, I have continued to put my academic learning into context with the bigger picture, always relating the theory, for example recombinant DNA technology, to its purpose on industrial and even global scales. This has helped to prevent me from becoming disengaged from the relevance of learning such detail and something I have also added to help conclude my work as suggested in the 'Introduction to Academic Writing at Masters Level' workshop. In terms of becoming more flexible and adaptable, the knowledge gained from understanding the different preferred working styles has helped me to become more spontaneous and open to working in more flexible ways to encourage better working environments, especially with group members that prefer less structure (but still get the work done). I have also tried to pursue workshops and activities such as the Leadership scheme in order to demonstrate the application of skills employers value to benefit my future ambitions and relate the purpose of these workshops to my overall self development.
Finally, reflection on my feedback has also continued to improve my academics, especially in presentations where my feedback now comments on the fluent and clear presentation of material. I feel I have addressed the initial action points I set myself and I have been successful, however, if I were to do this again, I would keep up with more regular blogging, as this helps to provide valuable reflection. Nonetheless, I hope to continue to apply the principals learned, as I have done so far. And in my final term at Warwick, with a little bit more time on my hands, I now plan to finish the reflection and blogging required for the remaining workshops and complete the Warwick Skills Portfolio Award.
Samena Rashid
Dear Gwyn
thank you for you final entry, for your final entry I need you to do a little more work. If you could edit the above post so that you have the headings for the 3 action points you set yourself at the beginning and then evaluate each one by reflecting on what went well, what didn’t go so well, what you would do differently next time, any other learning. But also draw upon some examples. This will make your final entry more structured and also show a more detailed account on your learning and development.
I look forward to reading the final entry
best wishes
Samena
05 May 2012, 21:42
Samena Rashid
Dear Gwyn
Thank you for re editing the above entry
It is great to see how you have developed, well done and I hope you continue to keep up the good work. I would like to confirm that you have completed all the follow up work for the P1 workshop and can use it towards your skills portfolio award. I look forward to reading your final entry on the warwick skills portfolio award when you have done all 6 workshops. Remember to tag it as P1_Portfolio. I would suggest that for your final entry for the award you use the workshop titles as headings and then review your overall learning for each one of them, this well help you make the reflective account more structured.
good luck
Samena
06 Jul 2012, 10:29
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