Personal And Subject Learning Outcomes For Improving Academic Performance

Discussion

While I was starting the semester, I was overwhelmed with seeing the learning outcomes of the subject. As a new student in the semester I took several lessons and tests in which I couldn’t perform well. So, I was afraid that I won’t be able to meet the subject learning outcomes. But with the motivation of my mentor and help of peers, I gained my confidence back to do well in the semester. I realised that my overcoming my personal challenges, I can remove the barrier which were hindering me from meeting the subject learning outcomes. This assignment is prepared to present a brief overview of the learning outcomes that I could identify and achieve through this entire semester.

I identified certain personal learning outcomes with the help of my mentors during the semester. I observed that I could make the most of my classroom lectures as I lacked the abilities of taking notes of the lessons during the lecture given by the teacher. I mainly emphasised on writing the entire information provided by the professor lecture slides. I had this habit from past where I wrote down everything due to the fear that if I did not write it then I will forget it in future. This habit decreased my ability to listen intently and actually understand the topic taught by the professor (Redman & Maples, 2017). I found hard to strike a balance between writing the important information and understanding the lecture. Also, one of the subject learning outcomes was to write assignment on different topics. In that area I found difficulty in referencing the work. I had very little previous experience with different reference style therefore; I was unable to meet the criteria of correct referencing while writing the paper. My scores were graded low due to the inaccurately or inadequately referenced assignments. Another personal learning outcome for me was searching the suitable academic literature resource. I was unable to hunt the appropriate learning material online for different topics. I was overwhelmed with numerous results that displayed and I couldn’t filter the useful ones. It was challenging and time-consuming to select the best possible data resource for my study on a topic. I had difficulty in identifying the correct keywords for a search and I was also uncertain about which search engine to use for searching.

I identified these personal as well as subject learning outcomes. I believed that by reinforcing my personal learning needs I will be able to achieve the subject learning outcomes and perform well in the semester. To accomplish this, I utilised several approaches. I found out several free writing courses available online and I enrolled myself which suited the best as per my academic discipline. By learning through this course, I was able to tackle the issue of notes taking and preparing essays. I made efforts to write on a wide range of topics pertaining to my field. It not helped me in improving my technical writing but also develop an understanding of various topics. I wrote the essays and I also attempted at referencing it so that I could to practice different types of referencing styles and build an expertise on the referencing system as an unreferenced work is unacceptable in any facility. I improved in the area of searching abilities with the help of a friend. My friend helped me in understanding the wrong approaches that I was using and how should I use my abilities to do R&D on a particular topic with the help of various examples.

Conclusion

One of the root cause of my underperformance initially was that I used to get stresses with slightest of threshold and in the stressed condition I was not able to get any task done. So one of the personal learning outcomes was to be more patient with myself whenever I could feel that my stress level was increasing. So, I reminded myself that I want to improve and advance with each assignment, and not get bothered over each and every issue where I cannot quite understand (Stewart, et.al, 2015). Another important observation made by me was that while writing the assignments and searching for data on a topic, I noticed that a huge volume of information was retrieved from the news websites. This observation led me to define another personal learning outcome for me which was to be updated with the current affairs of the world especially on the Health and Social Care domain. I had no idea that the mainstream news addressed the topics of health and social care so commonly in the news, therefore decided to cultivate the habit of daily newspaper reading.

However, the most important aspect of my learning was learning to reflect on my actions. I maintained a journal with the help of one of my peer to reflect on the day’s important activities. At several occasions I also used various reflective models in order to evaluate an incident thoroughly. I believe reflection was an important part of academic, professional and personal success as it will allow me to understand myself in a better way, emphasise on my strengths and work accordingly in the future. I perceived reflection as an active process of investigating, assessing and reviewing the experiences by stressing on the previous learning and theoretical concepts. I believe that learning to reflect will help me in forming the future actions as it can help me in transforming the experiences gained from observing into authentic learning. So, reflection will help me in integrating the practice or experience with the theories that have been learned in the classroom.

By reflecting I also shared the knowledge with my other peers to help find out the solutions of challenging and complicated problems in the group activities. In that way I learnt to behave and practice appropriately in inter-professional associations. Similarly i can identify my strengths and weaknesses from reflection which further enables me to enhance the development in the areas that needs improvement. I realised through the entire semester that I gained self-awareness as a student and as a person and therefore reflection gave me opportunities for professional development and personal growth (Paget, 2001). The reflective practice can be utilised to re-define the understanding of professional knowledge. It can also be involved in the development of personal knowledge or self-awareness. Further, it can be implemented to evaluate the correctness of our actions. It is also used to bridge the gap between tacit knowledge and considered action. Apart from professional improvement, I could also focus on my personal development by cultivating self-awareness (AH, 2001). The focus of the reflection determines the outcome of the reflection like if the focus of reflection is improvement in patient care, it helps to expand and develop clinical knowledge and skills. I could audit my own actions of the classroom and training by reflecting on the incidents (Hinett & Weeden, 2010). By reflecting on my learning and actions, I understood that there is no end point to learning from their practice.

I believe through the entire semester I learnt to identify my learning needs and develop strategies to meet them. I ensured that I am making progress by timely review of my journals. I believe I was able to overcome my fear which I felt at the start of the semester and I could also manage my stress in a better way. My behaviour of apprehension also changed and I was motivated to learn. I transformed from a scared and overwhelmed student to a proactive student who was ready to take necessary actions to perform well in the semester.

Conclusion

To conclude, I leant the following skills with varying degrees of achievement level.

Skill learnt	Excellent	Good	Satisfactory	Poor
Notes-taking		_
Referencing	_
Stress management		_
Reading			_
Reflection		_

During the entire semester, I achieved both personal as well as professional growth by learning various skills. These skills will help in the practice in health and social care. Reflection was one of the most important personal learning outcomes that I could identify and achieve. In future, I will try to always use a suitable reflective model to analyse the experience. I think that without applying a model to reflect, there is a possibility that I might have stressed on just one aspect specifically a negative aspect, which limited the scope of the benefits of detailed and wider exploration (Ashby, 2006). The skills I learned through the experience will also help in avoiding the preventable errors I might have committed in the absence of this learning. These skills will help me in my practice in health and social care practice to maintain a healthy relationship with my team members and perform my duty by offering the superior quality of care to the service users. However, I still lack the abilities to develop a reading habit. In the future I will adopt an improved and realistic strategy to ensure that I read newspaper every day.

References

AH, C., 2001. Private thoughts in public spheres: issues in reflection and reflective practices in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 36(4), pp.512-19.

Ashby, C., 2006. Models for reflective practice. Practice Nurse, 32(10), pp.28-30.

Hinett, K. & Weeden, P., 2010. How Am I Doing?: Developing critical self-evaluation in trainee teachers. Quality in Higher Education, 6(3), pp.245-57.

Paget, T., 2001. Reflective practice and clinical outcomes: practitioners’ views on how reflective practice has influenced their clinical practice. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 10(2), pp.204-14.

Redman, P. & Maples, W., 2017. Good Essay Writing: a Social Sciences Guide. London: Sage.

Stewart, G., Seifert, T. A. & Rolheiser, C., 2015. Anxiety and self-efficacy’s relationship with undergraduate students’ perceptions of the use of metacognitive writing strategies. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6 (1), pp. 4-12.