Reflecting on your experiences

At Input 1 you will select three skills to work on throughout your time doing the Award. You will probably develop lots more than these three but to achieve the Award you need to be actively trying to develop those three specifically. Rather than waiting for situations to arise you’ll need to be going out of your way to look for ways to develop. This might involve attending workshops or doing online training or perhaps shadowing someone who portrays a skill you are trying to develop or asking for certain responsibilities in your role. You will decide how you go about developing your skills. Your approach will depend on a number of things including your role and your how you like to learn. 

To be able to reflect effectively as you progress on the Award you will need to be working on developing your skills and having impact throughout your time on the Award.

Half-way through (Input 2),  you will reflect back on the experiences you have had and the progress you have made based on the steps you have taken to try to develop your skills and have a positive impact on others.  You will also consider changes you might make to your approach given what you have learnt so far.

Your Award Leader will let you know what format these reflections need to be in, they may need to be written down or you may be able to record them as a video or an audio file. 

To be able to reflect effectively you will need to be working on developing your skills and having impact throughout your time on the Award.

At the end of your time on the Award (Input 3) you will capture a final reflection, similar to the reflection at Input 2. You will focus on the three skills you chose at the beginning and describe how you have tried to develop them and what you have learnt. You'll also reflect back on the positive impact you have had and how you went about doing this.

Rather than:

I wanted to develop my time management skills in this role and there were lots of deadlines to meet as part of the project I was working on so this really helped me develop this skill. I now feel much more confident with time management. I no longer miss deadlines or rush to get work completed at the last minute and this is going to be really helpful next year as I go into my third year. 

Something like this is better:

I wanted to develop my time management skills in this role and there were lots of deadlines to meet as part of the project I was working on so this really encouraged me to develop in this area. To develop this skill I initially had a chat with my line manager about it as I was interested to see what sort of approach she took. She always seemed really on top of things so I felt I could learn a lot from her. 

She explained that she uses OneNote and Outlook as a way to keep track of tasks so I found online training focussed on both of those pieces of software. Having done the training I started using both of these but found that I still found it more natural to keep written to-do lists because that is what I have always done. However, I know this is not an efficient approach so I am trying out a few different ways of keeping electronic to-do lists so I can find one that works for me. I did find that adding deadlines for tasks via Outlook was really helpful. I set reminders for two days before things were due and this approach really worked for me and helped me stay on top of things. 

I have learnt that being organised is key to time management, I need to put the effort in at the outset to be effective in this area. I also learnt there is not a one size fits all approach, what works for one person might not work for another. 

Rather than:

Marketing is an important part of my role so I had to do the Social Media for the department. I was able to create really engaging posts that encouraged students to come along to our events. I increased traffic to our events page by 20% which was great. I was also able to improve student-facing pages of the department’s website, I made the language more engaging and included lots of images which really seemed to improve the look of the website and made it easier for students to find the information they were looking for.

Something like this is better:

I wanted to improve my skills around marketing so in order to do this I put myself forward to administer the department’s social media platforms. I spent time reviewing previous posts to familiarise myself with the correct tone for future posts. I also spoke to staff about what had worked well in the past and what sorts of posts had been popular. I had a chat with my colleagues and with my friends to get an idea of what sorts of things they would be interested in seeing on the channel. Once I had posted something I would review to see how much traction it had had and if it wasn’t very popular I reflected on why that might have been and tried something different the next time. This experience has taught me that the tone used on social media is really important to get peoples’ attention quickly and I need to continue to work on writing succinctly for an online audience.

Rather than:

In our group, we maintained clarity regarding our work, tasks, and deadlines. We understood the importance of flexibility, allowing for adjustments if anyone faced challenges meeting a specific deadline. To stay organized and on track, we utilized various tools such as setting reminders on Outlook and sending reminder messages through our WhatsApp chat.

Or

Working in this role has been extremely fulfilling, as you get to converse with and get advice from people from a variety of backgrounds. When I started this job, I had not considered the impact that these conversations would have on me. Throughout these two campaigns, I have had conversations that have changed my idea of what I want to do when I graduate. Talking to people working in the fields I am interested in has truly stimulated my forward-looking mentality. 

Something like the below is better:

I really wanted to play a positive role within my team and so there were a few ways I tried to do this throughout my time working on the project. We realised early on that staying on top of tasks was essential to the success of the project. I therefore decided to take on the role of managing the tasks of the team. I created a spreadsheet and asked everyone to put their tasks on there, I discussed each of the tasks with the team members and together we assigned a deadline. This meant I was able to prompt my team mates before deadlines hit which helped keep everyone on track to do this I set reminders on Outlook and sent reminders via WhatsApp.  

I was also really careful when sending reminders to my team members to be really friendly as I didn’t want to stress them out or make it seem like I was in charge. This approach meant that we not only were able to get all of the tasks completed but we all got on well too. What I have learnt from this experience is that making small changes can have an overall really positive impact, I am much more aware of this now and will try to carry that awareness with me going forwards. 

You can hear from previous Award completers about reflecting on impact below

For reflecting on the skills/abilities you wanted to develop during the Award: 

Context - What is the context, for example what was your role and what was the skill you wanted to develop (and why)? 

Action - In that context, what did you do to work towards developing the skill? 

Result & Learning - What were the outcomes of your actions? What went well? What stretched you? What didn’t work? What did you learn as a result? Why does it matter to you? How does it influence how you would approach something similar in the future? 

For reflecting on the impact you had during the Award: 

Context - What is the context, for example, what was your role, its purpose and in what areas you were trying to develop personally? 

Action - In that context, what did you do to try to have an impact?