Student Learning Journals: Tracking Academic Goals - Essay Sample

Introduction

A reflexive journal refers to the personal records of a student to keep the track on the student's learning activities that are undertaken to make the student to meet the goals set in academics. The student has several businesses that they do concerning their academic work which may either be individual or done as a group with the other students. When the work is done in a group, then the individual contribution of all the parties are required to contribute to achieving their goals and objectives. Such observations are taken keenly inclusive of the responses of the other students and are used to do the analysis the way the student thinks. This paper, in particular, explores to analyze a group that was set and tasked to make preparation and presentation of an issue. The analysis of the cooperation of the members of this group is meant to be used in developing and writing a reflexive journal for one of the students in the group by name ALEXANDRA. Some of the members came up in togetherness and reasoned together to find out the best ways to make their work in this group a success. In their reasoning, ALEXANDRA gave her view on the same, and she said the following regarding the same.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

"On the third week of the second semester, we formed new teams to work on our task and deliver our final presentation. My team named GSM Lions was formed of seven individuals named Daniel, Tarina, Naptisha, Suleymaan, Lionel, Jag and myself (ALEXANDRA). After we completed the Belbin test, we acknowledged our strengths and roles which were helpful in building the team, tasks assignments and creating a strategy which would help us in completing our project. Knowing that Naptisha is a coordinator and that she has experience in leadership, we decided to name her our team leader. Also, she took initiative in creating a Gant Chart and to record and update our progress. Each individual has been assigned with a task in regards his/her skills and role.

Myself being a teamworker, a part of the task which I have been assigned, I decided to create the final presentation which also came with the responsibility to check on the progress of my colleagues and make sure that they will finish their research in time so I can have the right material. Daniel is also a teamworker and he was very helpful in building our team strategy as he came up with useful ideas like having a short meeting every week before our class. He also helped me in creating the presentation and his opinion was valuable. Tarina was the only person in our Team who had the ability to implement ideas and that was very beneficial for us, because she was one of the main people to decide on the final strategy that we are going to use. Along the process we discovered that her work needs to be reformulated and she reacted fast, which proved that she is efficient and a reliable individual of our team.

As part of our strategy, we decided to create an online group for a better and efficient communication. Some of the top benefits of this group was that we could share materials and ideas and also offer help and support for any of our team members. Also, it was a great opportunity for us to bond and communicate better as a team at any time. Without it, we would be restrained to our short meeting on every Wednesday, which would not be enough. On the last week before the presentation delivery we had some unexpected issues and the fact that we could communicate through this chat we were able to solve them in time and all team members were aware of the situation. We noticed that the platform was a special way through which we were able to solve the challenges that existed amongst ourselves especially when it to the dispute over specific ideas or interests. In the cases whereby the group did not set or establish a definite deadline for the completion of the process, the members were required to respond to various open-ended questions that would be revisited in the next meeting. In case of any need for improvement, the group set the appropriate deadline that was favorable for all the members of the group. This would give each member the opportunity to submit their portions and allow other members to read over their work."

Decision making formed an integral component of all the group activities that were tailored towards meeting the objective of the team itself, as well as having the work done to completion and to give the group members also get a grasp of the whole thing from the group discussions. The process of decision, making within the group was organized, and this was facilitated by having the members have enough time to share most in the group that was created online. The ease of coming to a consensus was as well facilitated by the fact that all persons were given the task according to their areas of specialization and given a chance to advice the group on the best solution concerning the areas they were assigned to work on. The coming together with one mind and intention of finding a solution of the groups with acceptances by all the group members that there is a problem and allowing to solve it.

The working taking responsibility, ownership and acting on the initiative were very effective in the communication facilitation among the group members. The online group that was created helped greatly in ensuring that there was harmony an understanding amongst the whole team. The success of this group was major as a result of the effective communication that the group leader created. This surely confirms that the individuals were surely in their right position of service and participation. Alexandra also succeeded in her department of compilation having taken a keen to follow up on the other members to find out how far they had gone with the task of each one of them.

The most critical situation in this group is the time when we just about to do the delivery when issues rose up in the group. At this time we had to define and decide on the best criteria for solving these issues for the success of the delivery to earn good grades from the presentation. We called ourselves into a meeting have made it clear to all members and allowed those who specialized in the leadership department and the related departments to give the advisory effort we used, and surely we succeeded. We had to understand the situation for the solution to be sound in the team for the restoration of the team. The team regained and excelled after taking a deep evaluation of the issue and having them sorted at once.