6HURM005W Cultural Differences and People Management
Guidance on second and final piece of assessment: reflective diary (75% of module mark)
Submission via Turnitin before Thursday 8 th April 2021 13.00 UK time
The reflective diary is designed to help you gain the most from the module by encouraging you to reflect throughout on your learning during the module. Although the submission date is 8th April 2021, at the latest, you are strongly advised to write down your reflections relating to particular module topics and your own learning, as soon as possible after the relevant sessions. We have provided you with access to an electronic journal on the blackboard site to be able to do this and later to copy and amend these journal entries before submitting a final version of your reflective diary to Turnitin.
Format
The diary should be 3,000 words (+-10% excluding reference and bibliography list at end).
You should use the first person “I” voice, as it is a record of your thoughts and reflections. You should adopt a style akin to a report style with a brief introduction and conclusion and then subheadings for each of the sections. Please aim to keep the sections roughly of a similar length rather than one very long entry and a very short one for example.
As with any piece of academic work, any references you make to literature and research within the journal should be fully referenced in a bibliography or reference list at the end of the diary. You should use an appropriate academic format for referencing.
Beyond the above instructions for the presentation and format of your work, which you must adhere to, you can make a choice as to how you actually structure and present the work. Please do not spend too much time on the appearance or image of the work, i.e. do not spend a lot of time including pictures, for example. This is not the main aim of the exercise but of course your work must be checked carefully for errors and in that sense presentation is important.
Content
The content should be a combination of the following:
1. Your reflections on the reading/research that we have covered on the module and on the concepts and ideas we have introduced and discussed in teaching sessions. For example, how do you understand the concepts and how can you explore them using the literature and other sources? How accessible do you find the ideas and concepts?, how useful do you find them or imagine them to be in the future?, how
interesting do you find them? Remember that the focus is on your exploration of and understanding of the concepts and not on the evaluation of the teaching (this will be handled separately in a module evaluation).
2. Your reflections on how the reading, concepts and ideas presented in the module, and any extra reading you have done, connect with, and illuminate, your own personal experiences or observations; or case studies. These can be both past and present experiences and can be about any organisational experiences, not necessarily work experiences, but also experiences in educational, recreational, or charitable organisations, for example. You can use case studies covered on the module or other ones you are familiar with.
You may make the exploration of these experiences or observations as personal as you wish but you should not include any information you feel uncomfortable about, or that you feel is too “personal” to you. You may find something to have been very valuable learning but feel you would rather not include it. You can, for example, describe interactions between other people that you have observed rather than relating concepts to yourself. You can also change the details and names as appropriate to maintain confidentiality. Of course, if you want to use the diary to think through personal experiences, you are also able to do this. You should feel assured that the diary is confidential and will only be read by the markers for the module. The external examiner for the module will also look at a sample of diaries
To sum up: You should take a concept/idea or two from either lectures/seminars or reading material provided to explore in greater depth and detail; ones that you have found particularly meaningful, challenging or useful. The exploration of these concepts and ideas should include a) personal reflection on how meaningful these concepts/ideas were to you; b) evidence of your wider reading to make sense of these concepts. c) connections with your own personal experiences and/or case studies.
3. To achieve the above, you can use a reflective model for a framework for each session, such as Kolb (1984) to guide your reflection for each session or a similar one, or you can choose to adopt a more free-style reflective approach (as long as you meet the criteria shown in the assessment/grading rubric overleaf).
To achieve the above, we request that you discuss material related to FOUR of the main concepts/ideas on the module taken from four or more teaching weeks. You should also include a brief introduction which outlines your structure and specifies which FOUR concepts you have chosen to structure your diary around, a conclusion about your learning overall and a reference list. There should be a balance between the sections so that you do not have one very long entry for example and one very short one.
Please note that we will work on a formative way on this reflective diary in some workshop sessions with tutors, so that you can gain some further guidance in class. In relation to this, we ask you to keep an electronic learning journal via the Blackboard site, which is confidential to you and can include the tutor to look at a sample entry if you wish. More details about this will be given at the start of the module.