What is reflection?
Reflection is the process of critically examining your past experiences – good and bad – and applying what you have learnt from these to inform your future action.
At some point in your life, you’ve probably had to stand up in front of an audience and make a presentation. You may have been defending the central argument of your last essay, or reporting back on a recent work placement, or maybe you were standing in an election at the unions or SRC.
Whatever the situation, you probably thought about your performance afterwards and decided it was either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Perhaps you were a huge success and the audience laughed at all your jokes; perhaps you weren’t, and the silence was so distracting you stumbled through the rest of your allotted time.
In the latter case, you probably tortured yourself for days or even weeks afterwards trying to assign blame – Why did you make so many stupid jokes? Why didn’t you write your notes down on flash cards?
We all do it: it’s in our nature to try and learn from our mistakes so we don’t repeat them. But we can learn just as much from considering our successes as we can from our failures.
So your audience loved your presentation: why? How did you get it so right?
- Did you kick things off with a strong introduction or build up to a gripping conclusion?
- What sort of language and tone were you using?
- What was your body language conveying?
- What sections did your audience like best?
Think about it carefully, and you’ll realise that not everything went right – actually, you forgot to set up your presentation beforehand and had to fumble with your flash drive for the first few minutes while introducing yourself – and there are some real positives you can take away from the worst too: you may have stumbled awkwardly through the second half, but you actually made your most important points in the opening arguments.
Everything you do in life can be critically examined in this way: actions you’ve taken, choices you’ve made, tasks you’ve carried out – any situation where you’ve had to take decisive action.
As you reflect on your experiences, you'll come to realise that experiences can't be simply categorised as either 'good' or 'bad' - whatever the result, there's always plenty to learn.
This is the heart of reflection: taking an objective and critical approach to evaluating your past experiences, considering both the positives and the negatives, and applying the lessons you’ve drawn from these observations in future situations.
What is PDP?
PDP stands for Personal Development Planning - a structured approach to reflection which can aid you in planning for your future.
Basic reflection is about more than recognising your successes and learning from your mistakes – it’s useful for identifying your strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes. For example, looking back on your significant university experiences you might observe that:
Remember what PDP is about with an easier acronym: reflect on your Past experiences, decide on your Destination and goals, and Plan how you'll get there.
- You don’t like presenting to large audiences - it's never gone well.
- You enjoy problem solving tasks.
- Your written skills are exceptional, but your numeracy still needs work.
- You prefer to work alone, but you’ll happily work in a group as well.
But a more questioning approach to reflection can yield much more fundamental personal discoveries. Ask yourself: why do you feel this way? What is the significance of these likes and dislikes? What are the connections between them?
Digging deeper, you might realise that:
- You don’t like presenting because it makes you feel exposed and you have to think on your feet.
- Your enjoyment of problem solving is connected to a desire to make things better and improve the world around you.
- You’d be well suited to any job that involves lots of writing, but your poor numeracy might be an issue in certain job sectors.
- You prefer working alone because you get to use your own judgement and initiative more often – actually, you quite like working in a team as long as you have a defined role and individual responsibility.
This more sophisticated form of reflection moves you beyond simple understandings of your strengths and weaknesses and develops a much better sense of what sort of person you are - what motivates you, what career you want and ultimately what you want out of life.
Armed with this superior self-awareness, you can further reflect on these findings to help you in making the big decisions about your future. What sort of career do you want? Where do you want to be in five years’ time? What about in ten? To return to our examples:
- Perhaps you could build up your confidence in presenting gradually – start small, and work your way up to bigger crowds?
- If you want to make the world around you better, perhaps you should consider working for a charity or the public sector?
- Numeracy is highly useful – perhaps you could improve your skills somehow? Are there refresher courses available within the university?
- Responsibility seems to be important to you – perhaps you are ultimately aiming to manage others in your future career?
The Careers Service are more than happy to offer help and advice in putting your personal development plan together. You can book an appointment to see them here.
Answering these sorts of questions should give you a clearer idea of your goals for the future. Once you know what these are, you can create a plan that sets out the steps you’ll need to take to achieve them.
This is the key output of personal development planning: a personal developmental plan to keep you on track and ensure you fulfil your potential.
The PDP process is most effective when recorded in a portfolio - it gives you something to refer back to at a later date and something you can share and discuss with others. The University's recommended portfolio is Mahara - click the Mahara tab at the top to learn more.
What is Mahara?
Mahara is the University's electronic portfolio software – a place to collect and reflect on your achievements, create a personal development plan and build an online CV.
Mahara is free for all University of Glasgow students to use. You can access Mahara via Moodle - just click the Mahara link in the column on the right after you log in.
To see examples of Mahara reflection in action, take a look at the GSP e-Portfolio templates.
You can learn more about Mahara in the following introductory video, or read more about its features below.
Features
Protect your privacy
Your Mahara profile is as private as you want it to be. You control exactly what content others can see: share with the world, your friends or no-one at all – the choice is yours.
Present yourself professionally
Build an online CV using Mahara’s built-in résumé tools and share the link with employers – make a memorable first impression and ensure that they see only the most up-to-date information about you.
Start a blog
Reflecting upon your experiences is most effective when it’s written down: long after the memories fade, you have a record of your developmental journey for easy reference when constructing CVs and applying for jobs.
Display content from almost anywhere
Already share your work elsewhere? Not a problem. Mahara includes a number of options for importing content from other sources onto your pages. Display blog posts, news feeds, photos, videos, job searches – whatever you want to share, Mahara’s powerful import features are up to the task.
Access your files from anywhere
You can store up to 100mb of files in Mahara and access them from anywhere – very useful if you’re prone to losing USB pen drives or accidentally deleting emails with important attachments.
Collaborate with friends
Mahara’s social networking features allow you link up with your friends and create special interest groups. Create pages together and discuss your ideas in the group’s forums – getting tutorial groups together in the same place has never been easier.
A portable portfolio
Mahara can only be used by current students, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll lose all of your hard work when you graduate. Wherever you end up next, Mahara’s easy to use export functionality ensures that you’ll be able to take your information with you.
Protect your Privacy
Your Mahara profile is as private as you want it to be. You control exactly what content others can see: share with the world, your friends or no-one at all – the choice is yours.
Present yourself professionally
Build an online CV using Mahara’s built-in résumé tools and share the link with employers – make a memorable first impression and ensure that they see only the most up-to-date information about you.
Start a blog
Reflecting upon your experiences is most effective when it’s written down: long after the memories fade, you have a record of your developmental journey for easy reference when constructing CVs and applying for jobs.
Blogs are like electronic diaries. They’re an effective way of recording your experiences, and you don’t have to limit your use of them to reflection – you can write a blog on any topic you want. And like everything else you create in Mahara, you can control exactly who sees it.
Display content from almost anywhere
Already share your work elsewhere? Not a problem. Mahara includes a number of options for importing content from other sources onto your pages. Display blog posts, news feeds, photos, videos, job searches – whatever you want to share, Mahara’s powerful import features are up to the task.
Access your files from anywhere
You can store up to 100mb of files in Mahara and access them from anywhere – very useful if you’re prone to losing USB pen drives or accidentally deleting emails with important attachments.
Collaborate with friends
Mahara’s social networking features allow you link up with your friends and create special interest groups. Create pages together and discuss your ideas in the group’s forums – getting tutorial groups together in the same place has never been easier.
A portable portfolio
Mahara can only be used by current students, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll lose all of your hard work when you graduate. Wherever you end up next, Mahara’s easy to use export functionality ensures that you’ll be able to take your information with you.
Why is reflection and PDP important?
Unlock your potential | Evidence your strengths | Plan for the future
At times it feels like your final degree mark is all that matters, but it’s far more important to understand what you’ve learnt along the way. You develop all sorts of highly useful skills, qualities and abilities through studying at Glasgow - your graduate attributes.
Graduate attributes are powerful tools, but you can only make use of them properly when you are confident that you possess them: you need that self-awareness of your strengths and the ability to recognise the transferability of your skills before you can apply them effectively in other contexts.
Reflecting on your experiences will help you to appreciate just how much you’ve got out of your time at university – you’ll be surprised to see how far your skills have come.
Graduate attributes are a firm foundation for a successful future, but it’s not always enough just to have them – you need to be able to articulate their value to others.
The graduate job market has never been more competitive, and places in postgraduate study are equally in demand. Whatever you do after university, you’ll need to find ways to give you the edge over other candidates.
Spending some time reflecting on the significance of your past experiences ensures that you’ll always be able to demonstrate your worth when it matters. Whether you’re filling out an application form or put on the spot in an interview, answers and examples will flow naturally – and you’ll be able to respond with the easy confidence and articulacy of the well-prepared.
My original goal was simply to get a good degree, but now I realise that I must do more than that. Now my hope is to take part in activities such as clubs and societies, and generally get involved in University life.
- Karen Jamieson
Marketing yourself effectively only really matters once you know where you’re going. There’s plenty of time to explore your career options and dabble in different fields, but eventually you’ll probably want to commit to a greater goal.
Personal development planning processes can help you to answer life’s big questions – what motivates you, what career do you want, what sort of life do you wish to lead – and plan out the steps you’ll need to take to achieve your dreams.
With a well-thought out plan in hand, you’re halfway towards achieving your goals – and you’ll have everything you need to keep yourself focused and on track the rest of the way.
Resources
Ready to try Mahara? Log into Mahara via your Moodle sign-in - just click the Mahara link on the right.
Don't know where to begin? Why not attend IT Services' introductory Mahara training.
Want to see some examples of Mahara in action? View examples of reflection from the College of Social Science's Graduate Skills Programme:
Want to learn more about Mahara's uses? Watch an interview with a student Mahara user here.