CI7900 Professional placement reflective Assignment Sample
Introduction
Professional placement is certainly an important and immensely helpful aspect of the career of a student as it leads that student towards a particular direction and nurtures skills and knowledge through different experiences. The present reflection report is based on my internship placement experience in Virtual Reality Technologies Pvt. Ltd., where I worked as a Junior Quality Manager. Like the name of my job role, my tasks and responsibilities were not limited to a particular area of quality management practices but I have learned myriad new things about diverse organisational activities. The following essay will shed light on all these experiences and learning referring to my personal and professional skill development.
A reflective essay consists of the detailed demonstration and critical analysis of real-life experiences and development of a perspective of reasoning while writing a reflective essay, while it also states a link between existing knowledge and new experiences (Bassot, 2015). The present reflective essay will create this link by explicating how I have used my skills and competencies during my internship and how the new experiences have helped me to enhance my further growth and development. The discussion will include an explanation of Kolb’s learning cycle to depict the way I have applied knowledge and skills in a professional context and explored more.
Discussion
Incorporation of relevant theory
The effectiveness of learning is determined by its suitable and appropriate application to address any problem. Moon (2013) has opined that learning without application does not have that value and it does not lead to any structured result or meaningful outcome. During my 12 months’ internship placement, I have undergone a variety of stages, performed different activities, and faced myriad challenges, and all these aspects contributed to my learning. As presented by the logbook that I have experienced different things in different weeks. For an in-depth understanding of my implementation of skills and overall learning, Kolb’s learning cycle is explained below.
The experiential learning theory of Kolb works on two different levels including 4 separate learning styles and a learning cycle of 4 stages (Skillshub, 2017). The 1st stage is Concrete Experience, and in this stage, I have gained completely a new experience. I started an internship of 12 months in Virtual Reality Technologies Pvt. Ltd. as Junior Quality Manager. My job role included several responsibilities although I was not aware of all the strategies and practices to perform those tasks. So, for me, it was a completely new area to explore and new things to learn and experience. The next stage of the cycle is Reflective Observation, as I would like to say that the entire period was a process of continuous learning for me. Buddying up sessions with senior engineers in the 6th week, and with my team in the 10th week made me aware of teamwork. At the same time, instead of random decision-making or doing a job, I tried to perform my tasks with more consciousness because I was supposed to report to the senior manager.
The very next stage is Abstract Conceptualisation, and this stage is about drawing conclusions about what I have learned from my prior experiences (Chan, 2012). A first I must say that the entire internship period has been an effective learning experience for me as I have gained knowledge of quality management, management of building materials, construction plan development, vendor contract, and many more. Most important thing is that apart from developing knowledge about these professional aspects, I have become more aware of effective teamwork, organisational hierarchy, cost management, budgeting, effective communication, and all. The final stage is Active Experimentation or the application of ideas or knowledge developed. From the very initial stage, I realised the importance of communication and direct interaction approach everywhere to get success. I must say that the experiences shared by the senior engineers have helped me a lot, and my good communication skills have helped while contracting vendors, however, at the time of communication I realised the need for further development of my verbal communication skills. In the 16th week, I realised the changes and improvement in communication skills and interaction with managers, vendors and also my teammates has helped in the skilful and strategic way of situation management only by communication. I have tried my level best while using technical skills in projects although after completing 13 to 15 weeks, I recognised that I need to improve my presentation and analytical skills. So, my next action plan is to focus on these areas and drive improvement.
Critical reflection on placement experience and professional and personal development
As I have mentioned above that the placement experience has been quite interesting to me and I am certainly thankful to all the senior engineers, managers and teammates for giving immense support and learning opportunities. According to Foti, et al. (2018), observation is one of the important tools that escalates the learning process and it is nurtured by the sense of knowledge and interests. I have also experienced the same thing during my internship placement. At the time of buddying up with senior site engineers, I have tried to observe their activities. Beyond the technical skills, I observed their professional skills like analytical skills to understand project needs and moving to different sites to fulfil these needs. Initially, I was provided with details regarding the basics of quality management, furthermore, the senior engineers helped me throughout. I like to mention the experience of 28th Week, where I learned from the senior managers how to ensure quality and manage resources like money.
In the 26th week, I worked with line managers and it was a memorable experience, where I came to know a lot about safe work culture management, which is another vast area of discussion. Moreover, completing tasks within the deadline was another important learning, which I need to follow and apply everywhere throughout my professional career. So, I must say that during this 12 months tenure, I have become aware of the operational activities of an organisation. Moreover, close observation with professionals has enabled me to strengthen my interpersonal and cognitive skills. As opined by Bolton (2010), a complete understanding of strengths and weaknesses allows identifying capabilities and areas that need further improvement. I have observed the development of my communication skills.
As I would like to mention that I have not only relied on the reports and feedback shared by senior managers and supervisors regarding my activities as well as team performance, but I have also carried out self-analysis. During the last few months, I have analysed my growth and learning in different stages, thus I have also realised how the involvement of versatile tasks in this internship placement has helped me to gradually nurture my interpersonal skills. This is how, along with an improvement in the professional field, I have also improved my personality by developing interpersonal skills like analytical power, time management, accuracy, and all.
Critical understanding of placement organisation and experience in it
Placement involves a planned period of working in a place and experiencing new things thereby exploring further areas of learning (Tanna, et al., 2020). During place, I have had the experience of doing different kinds of tasks, where I was supposed to rely more on my cognitive skills rather than using technical skills. As I have realised that throughout the placement experience, I had the opportunity of learning from mistakes, which has been strengthened by knowledge about practical circumstances along with strengthening the capability of problem-solving. In my 12 months internship in Virtual Reality Technologies Pvt. Ltd., I have learned a lot of things although I have faced myriad challenges but these have been critical learning events or experiences. Being the Junior Quality Manager I have been responsible to the Senior Manager, and this accountability was my serious concern while doing any task.
Before entering the project-related tasks and activities, I was introduced to the company policies and came to know about the ongoing project and this transparent approach at the very initial stage motivated me to stringently follow and consider the targets and objectives of projects while doing my assigned tasks. After allocation of tasks and assignment my job role, I gradually learned the basic aspects of quality management especially the strategy of balancing cost, time and quality. Thus, I understood the importance of time management as well and how it is associated with the quality of my task, and eventually, I realised that this learning will help me in my personal life as well, where I usually compromise with the quality of my actions due to time limitations. Barto (2013) has also asserted that deep learning and personal understanding reflects intrinsic motivation by nurturing traits like emotional stability, conscientiousness and all that eventually impact the performance outcome.
Further, I assessed my knowledge and understanding of how the safety protocols measures and policies are implemented within the organization. Through this activity, I was able to generate the idea of the significant role that a quality manager should play in maintaining the risks and standards. As I was able to understand the basic knowledge and core skills that a quality manager should have I was trying to achieve the quality on-site and balance the quality cost and time of the project. Santos (2018) asserted that generating feedback works efficiently to improve self-awareness. Therefore I contacted the contractors in order to generate feedback regarding the traffic control measures that can be implemented for making the proposal for the new traffic control. However, in this aspect the identified that I also have the opportunity to analyze the final customer satisfaction in order to build the materials at more affordable prices.
Development and practice of specific employability and personal skills
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Self-awareness
In the 4th week, I was mainly associated with the activities of understanding the basic knowledge and skills about quality management. For this, I required skill development and reflection on balancing cost quality as well as achieving the quality on-site. As I learned about managing and building material on small sites I was able to reflect on my ability to achieve the desired objective by breaking the task into smaller targets. By using my skills of decision making I was able to achieve the daily goal and utilize my theoretical knowledge which I have learned in my course (McConalogue, 1987).
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Communication and interpersonal
Similarly in the sixth week of the module, I need to communicate with the senior engineer in order to understand the way in which they work and take up the contractor to make the task ready on time. As I followed this activity by operating the admin work and preparing the monthly reports for evaluation I believe my interpersonal and communication skills have helped me in learning and implementing the ways in which the projects are managed that further enabled me to understand in-depth analysis of the current business strategies.
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Understand and apply employer objectives through training
As I was able to generate the feedback from line managers and contractors regarding traffic control that can be implemented for making the new control proposal for the traffic identify that analyzing the supply building material and measuring the timeline or working of the contractor can create the working plan more efficient. In this way, I was able to apply the skills and opportunity to achieve the employee object to have minimum cost-saving business expenses as well as meet the deadlines.
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Research and information literacy
In the twelfth week, I proofread all composing new plans and sites that could have been implemented in the upcoming project identifying that I was efficiently able to gather the information and make the best use of it for future measurement purposes. However due to a lack of confidence to meet the deadline I sometimes became overwhelmed which was also overcome by me by getting on an inspection with the senior civil engineer and manager to understand the ways in which the inspection can take place in the future.
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Management and leadership
Over the period of this course, I have also been able to enhance my management and leadership abilities. It is evident from my activity logbook from 18th week that I learned about the ways in which the site engineer advice is the activities of every sector and accordingly the material design executions and operations are carried out since then I have also been very much confined for improving my technical skills to check on the quality and design of the materials. I believe in the future if I get similar opportunities I will be able to advise the people regarding the ways in which the work needs to be e done or executed and also help in analyzing the plan of execution.
Evaluation of tasks in the workplace and application of problem-solving initiatives
I have always wanted to enhance my career and get an opportunity in the digital information technology and software industry. I believe based on my skills I can have numerous choices available on the basis of my educational qualification and experience. The role of a junior quality manager is one of the significant roles in the company as I will have the opportunity to interact with the internal stakeholders and generate information and ideas regarding the future opportunities for advancement in the technology for product and service maintenance. With this placement, I had the opportunity to interact with experienced and elite people in the industry which helped me to generate a sense of clarity regarding the operations in the company (Pinto, 2009). As per my skills and attributes, I believe I will be able to contribute positively to the organization’s success and profitability in the future. Although I had numerous choices to develop my career opportunity and professional experience, working as a quality manager can provide me with the opportunity to explore changing consumer demand and trends in the Marketplace and support the specialist according to the changes. Life is about making the choices that enable an individual to come up with numerous scope and opportunities on the basis of the choices made (Pulsifer, 1998).
In week 31 as I focused on keeping up with the responsibility to keep the track and make a note for every operation I developed my analytical skill eventually to organise operations on the site about the related document and respective sheet of task allocation. Similarly in the following week, I learnt about safety protocols and regulations based on the site which helped me in analysing the operations supervised by the site engineer. I also identify the significance of improving my analytical skills due to the lack of my ability to analyse the issues. In the following week, I focused on developing my analytical and technical skills so that I do not compromise on the financial track and quality of the projects. From the 35th week, it can be identified that I learnt to identify the leadership duties and communicate accordingly with the quality manager in order to implement the strategies efficiently.
I give myself time to understand the desired concept and work which I was supposed to be doing in the organization being the assistant quality manager. Therefore I researched and focused on the special skills and the characteristics for being a good quality manager. In order to do so, I self-analyzed different aspects in my characteristics and attributes that I needed to rectify and improve to work as a good quality manager within the company. Therefore I highlighted my point of view with the manager who was very much understanding, empathetic and helpful. Ultimately I was able to identify various scopes and the opportunity is in the organizational workplace related to my attributes and skills.
Initially, I was gaining knowledge about the activities that I will be doing within the organization and the ways in which it operates and functions. As I received the point of view of other fellow members and the team I had elementary level information and knowledge about the same. In order to make my understanding more critical, I brushed up my knowledge based on other managerial concepts and theories of workplace Change management. Strategies the new knowledge I gained helped me to have a better understanding of the future chances of improving my abilities as a quality manager and improve my confidence by raising my family with the roles, responsibilities, and duties.
Based on my experience with the organizational roles and responsibilities so far the RACI model can be effective (Santos, 2018). Which stands for responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed which is associated with assigning responsibility and accountability for different tasks (Powell and Mills, 1995). While implementing the model, I will be able to identify the ways of operating my activities within the department of quality management. I observed that whenever a new product or service was introduced from the very beginning I allocated the task and responsibility to other team members effectively. It not only help in avoiding any confusion in the future but also helped me to understand the significance of managing the team with individual accountability. By making reports for individual members it became easier for me to identify the responsible person in the team. If appropriate task allocation were not done from the very initial level it could have been very much overwhelming and confusing later.
Apart from that I also believe that communicating with the team members will also play a significant role in achieving the desired objective. As I will be taking feedback from every team member and reporting accordingly to the senior quality manager I believe it will allow me as well as the individual team member to quickly obtain and identify the ideas for further work to be done effectively and eliminate any form of potential risk.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the concept of placement involves working in a place and having new experiences to explore other areas in personal and professional development in a planned way this module helped me in generating my personal and professional skills to be cognitive for adapting new role in the workplace by using the technical knowledge. I learned from my mistakes throughout the placement experience and by associating with the practical circumstances that I faced over the period of time I have been able to assess the critical learning experiences or events. Being the junior quality manager I reflected that my self-awareness, leadership management Research, and information literacy skills are very much apt to adapt to the organizational culture and professional standards. However, in order to apply the employer objective through training, I will need to enhance my skills and knowledge. This module also helped me to incorporate my skills and professional ability is it to align with theories and models for professional development and personal growth. I believe with eventual improvement in this aspect I will be able to contribute positively to the profitability and success of the company in the future.
References
Barto, A., 2013. Intrinsic motivation and reinforcement learning. Intrinsically motivated learning in natural and artificial systems, pp. 17-47.
Bassot, B., 2015. The reflective practice guide: An interdisciplinary approach to critical reflection. London : Routledge.
Bolton, G., 2010. Reflective Practice: writing and professional development. London: Sage.
Chan, C., 2012. Exploring an experiential learning project through Kolb’s Learning Theory using a qualitative research method. European Journal of Engineering Education, 37(4), pp. 405-415.
Foti, F. et al., 2018. Learning by observation and learning by doing in Down and Williams syndromes. Developmental science, 21(5), p. e12642.
McConalogue, T. (1987). Developing the Skill of Time Management. Management Decision, 25(1), pp.5-8.
Moon, J., 2013. A Handbook of reflective and experiential learning: Theory and Practice. s.l.:Routledge.
Pinto, J. (2009). Project Management. 1st ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, pp.12-14.
Powell, R. and Mills, R. (1995). Professional Knowledge Sharing Among Interdisciplinary Team Teachers: A Study Of Intra-Team Mentoring. Research in Middle-Level Education, 18(3), pp.27-40.
Pulsifer, C. (1998). Wings Of Wisdom. Mississauga, ON: Anncath-Roby Books, p.10.
Santos, J., (2018). Understanding Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI Matrix). [online] Project-Management.com. Available at: https://project- management.com/understanding-responsibility-assignment-matrix-raci-matrix/ [Accessed 27 January 2022].
Skillshub, 2017. What Are KOLB’s Learning Styles And What Do They Mean?. [Online]
Available at: https://www.skillshub.com/what-are-kolbs-learning-styles/#:~:text=The%20learning%20cycle%20that%20David,learner%20progresses%20through%20the%20cycle.
[Accessed 15 January 2021].
Tanna, S., Fyfe, M. & Kumar, S., 2020. Learning through service: a qualitative study of a community-based placement in general practice. Education for Primary Care, 31(5), pp. 305-310.
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