MGMT20140: Reflective Report Essay

MGMT20140: Reflective Report Essay

Reflective report:

While the blog is built throughout the term, the reflective report is to be developed towards the end of the term, as it requires you to present a critical self-analysis and reflection of your learning as a result of experiencing Design Thinking activity within this unit. The self-analysis and reflection must consider your personal development, as well as the development of your knowledge of Design Thinking topics. As a conclusion, students are to develop an action plan of key events and activities that they can undertake over the next 6 months to acquire any knowledge, skills and behaviors identified as requiring development. The reflective report should be submitted as a Word document with a length of 2300 words (+/- 10%), excluding preliminaries, tables, figures and references. Your reflective report must make reference to appropriate academic literature and theory in a critical way. Moreover, the report MUST explicitly reference appropriate evidence in your blog using a clear cross-reference system. The reflective report must make use of at least 10 high-quality references (APA style).

Introduction

The number of courses requiring students to write reflective reports is continually increasing.  While reflection writing is an occasional requirement, it is a core feature to most or all course assignments. Reflection writing is an evidence of reflective thinking, and this unit requires every student to reflect on the blogs presented in the class (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). In the context of this course, reflective writing will involve looking back at the blogs, analyzing the ideas presented in the blogs, and employing a careful thought about what the blog’s idea means to me in this course unit as well as my ongoing signs of progress as a learner.

Presentation: Blog Description

During the 10th week, our class had group presentations. The first presentation was done by the lecturer and followed by other four groups. The four groups explained their subject and analysis and provided solutions to the problems by applying various design thinking tools. As I followed their presentations, I was comparing all the design tools used by the four groups in generating relevant solutions to the issue at hand. In attempts to figure out a solution to long queues in the drive-through of McDonald, KFC, and Rod Rooster; one team explained the whole design tool. I failed to grasp a clear idea on the practical use of 2-3 design thinking tools but after the presentation, I understood the concept well (Brown & Wyatt, 2010). When presenting, the lecturer taught us the 3rd assessment, self-reflection. Self-reflection involves self-analysis of the design thinking tools.

Presentation: Blog Analysis and Evaluation

Prior to the introductory presentation by Dr. Michael, I had no idea of what self-reflection entails and whether or not it plays an important role in academic courses. Despite it being an informal mode of study in universities, the lecturer emphasized on its importance basically in self-analysis. Prior to the presentations by the four groups, I lacked a clear idea of the practical use of design thinking tools and their applicability in decision making. I thought long queues have no correlation to decision making, but from the presentation, I learned that different decision making design tools are required in solving such problems. Therefore, people in different managerial positions should use the right design tool in forming the relevant decision to resolve any problem faced by an organization.