FIT5057
REFLECTIVE REPORT V2.0
S1 2020 FIT5057 – Final Assignment 3
This assignment prepares you for adopting a reflective approach in practicing project
management in your future employment and university projects. You will learn about reflective
thinking through this final assignment.
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FIT5057
Reflective Report
F I T 5 0 5 7 – F I N A L A S S I G N M E N T 3
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Value Adding Fulfilment of Unit Learning Outcomes
This assignment helps you to understand the value of reflective thinking in project management. In a nutshell,
reflective thinking is a self-development skill that involves you thinking about your past actions and the impacts
on others and yourself, to engage in a process of continuous learning that increment improves you and your
skills in project management. Reflective thinking opens up leadership opportunities and sustains one’s prowess
to be successful to be top industry leaders or simply high performers who can operate at levels the rest of
society cannot do.
Unit’s Learning Outcomes Project Management Reflective Thinking Competency Areas
1. Analyse and evaluate the role of
the modern project manager in
the context of IT projects
This assignment helps you to understand what is reflective-thinking and
how to engage the techniques of reflective thinking, to bring together
PM theories and practice. Reflective thinking is a powerful self-
directed continuous “learning for improvement” strategy that will
continuously expand and deepen your PM knowledge and skills
during and after every project you have been and will be involved in.
You will need to recount the key concepts and methods of the PM
knowledge areas you have learnt, have basic critical1 abilities and
thinking with self-distancing awareness, in order to understand how
theories and practice play out in every experience of executing tasks.
Every reflection adds another layer of experience based PM
knowledge and skills enhancement, collectively cultivating your PM
wisdom.
The quality of learning for improvement will depend on how well you
have understood the PMBOKTM’s PM knowledge areas, SDLC
methodologies and PM strategies, techniques and decision supporting
tools, and case studies (all documented in your lecture resources) and
put this knowledge into practice via your near live case study in your
Assignment 2A.
2. Interpret and critique a variety of
project management
methodologies offered by
various professional bodies
including that provided by the
latest version (Edition 6) of
Project Management Body of
Knowledge (PMBOK).
3. Describe and apply the available
strategies, techniques and
decision tools used by project
managers to manage modern IT
projects based on PMBOK
methodology.
1 Critical abilities are critical thinking; analytical literacy (analytical reading and comprehension, precise and
analytical writing), and evidence-based research skills, which you were introduced to when doing Assignment 1 and
to a lesser degree Assignment 2A.
The ability to think reflectively prepares you to be a reflective practitioner of PM, always capable of
improving your proficiency in PM every time you engage with projects.
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Reflective Report
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What is Reflective Thinking?
Top leaders and high performers master the craft of reflective thinking. A reflective person looks back on past
actions and events, taking stock of emotions, experiences, actions, and responses; using that information to
evaluate their professional and personal behavioral patterns and capabilities to identify opportunities for
self-improvement. It removes the ego as it requires one to be brave and admit one’s weaknesses and also
acknowledging one’s strengths, both suited for continuous improvement.
Through reflective thinking, one can look back at what, how, who, when and why things happened. The
thinking process involves:
1. Recalling and paying attention to the practical applications of theories and behaviors in past emotions,
experiences, actions and events.
2. Applying different spectrums of critical thinking that analyses the past to identify one’s strengths and
weaknesses.
3. Engaging in inferential thinking that enables you to identify and work on self-development actions.
Reflective PM practitioners, including educationists and researchers, can always self-learn effectively from
their own experiences and rely less on formal learning and training to be knowledgeable and skillful in their
professions.
Learning reflective thinking is guided by understanding and using a single or mix of reflective models
(theories) that help frame how you can analyse your own thoughts of past experiences and identify self-
directed improvement activity. Knowing such models or theories is not just an academic exercise but is
transformed into pragmatic methods of reflective thinking.
So, what are these reflective thinking models or methods?
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REFLECTIVE THINKING MODELS
Reflective thinking models help you in the systematic deconstruction of your experiences. Before you
deconstruct your experiences, you need to define your reflective questions. These questions are framed by the
basic what, who, when, where, why and how. For example, question such as (University of Hull, 2020):
• What prior knowledge did I have?
• How did I act during the event?
• What did I learn from the event that I did not know before?
• What links can I make between my experience and other events/ideas from my studies or workplace?
• How can I use the knowledge I have gained from this event/experience in the future?
• Are there other interpretations of the event? Do I need to consider them?
• What are the implications of what happened?
• If I distance myself from the event and observe my reactions to it, does it change my perspective?
• Based on what I have learned, how should I act in future?
• What other information do I need in order to understand the implications of the event?
• What is the best way to go forward?
• Looking back, would I have done things differently? If so, what and why? If not, why not?
These questions are linked to what you want to know about your own capabilities as they are now and what
areas of improvement you want to action. The questions are your personal checklist of knowing and acting,
fuelled by your desire and will to learn or otherwise and not let ego create bias in your personal thinking.
The challenge is how to draw out the answers to these questions from past experience, such as your FIT5057
unit learning, or a more granular area of it, such as your Assignment 2A experience.
There are several commonly used reflective thinking frameworks (University of Hull, 2020):
1. Kolb’s Learning Cycle
2. Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle
3. Schon’s Framework
4. Rolfe et al’s Framework
5. ERA framework.
Kolb’s Learning Cycle (Univers ity of Hul l , 2020)
“Effective learning is seen when a person progresses
through a cycle of four stages: of (1) having a concrete
experience followed by (2) observation of and
reflection on that experience which leads to (3) the
formation of abstract concepts (analysis) and
generalizations (conclusions) which are then (4) used to
test hypothesis in future situations, resulting in new
experiences” (McLeod (2013) in University of Hull,
2020).
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Reflective Report
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Most of you would have started with Active Experimentation. If you had worked in projects, you would have
some preliminary abstract conceptualization of Project Management work from your past experiences. If you
have been doing all your workbook exercises, you would have established a more concrete experience in
your Assignment 2A project work, giving a much deeper and richer memory recall for reflections.
Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle (Univers i ty of Hul l , 2020)
Gibbs provides a genre (writing structure pattern)
for deconstructing your recount of past experience
that describes:
• A recount of what happened (the key
events)
• Your feelings/emotional response to events
and other people you interacted with
• Your evaluation of what was good or bad
in your perceptions of your own and other
responses arising during the events
• Your analysis views that make sense in
explaining what are the drivers that motivated you
and others to behave the manners you earlier
identified
• And leading to a logical conclusion and
identifying a self-improvement action plan as an appropriate next step.
Despite its writing breakdown, this framework can result in fairly superficial reflection, because it does not
involve much critical thinking when reflecting nor focus on connecting theory and practice implications. It has
been recognised to exclude assumptions that you may have about your experience, nor consider the need to
review your experience objectively in different perspectives and lead you to identify clearly how your
reflections becomes a learning experience that can result in changing your thinking, practice attitudes and
skills next them. Simply put, this model does not cultivate deep reflection.
Schon’s Model (Univers ity of Hul l , 2020)
This model motivates you to reflect during and after execution of
a task. It requires you to be proactive and aware that you want
to use a current situation as a reflective learning experience or a
given, part of your reflective practice work style.
If you have already been reflecting on your learning experiences
during this unit and making a series of reflective journals, you
could consider using Schon’s framework.
This framework is potentially an advanced reflective thinking,
reflective practitioner approach, because one is using reflection to enable learning and inform further action
after the experience. The reflective thinking can identify existing theories to explain the experience and build
new theories from analysing this interplay of existing theories.
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Rolfe et al Model (Univers ity of Hul l , 2020)
This is a simple, yet pragmatic model, often used by nurses in their
profession. By responding to what, so what, now what questions you
are able to outline an experience, relate the experience to wider
knowledge and identify implications for your practice.
It works well for reflecting on a specific event, not for
generalisation of events you have experienced.
Experience, Reflection Action (ERA) Model (Univers ity of Hul l , 2020)
This model feeds learning through reflection and to be
applied forward into future experiences. As it creates
reflections from experience in a well-structured and yet
simplistic manner, it is recommended for first time
reflective thinking learners.
Choosing Your Reflective Thinking Model
Now that you understand the commonly used reflective
thinking models, decide which one works best for you,
or you can create your own version by selecting
attributes of these models.
Whichever model you choose or design, make sure it
works for you in enabling you to:
1. learn from your experiences, including seeing
how theories can explain your experiences.
2. identify realistic and doable self-
improvement action plans to follow-up.
More importantly, commit resolve to follow through
your action plan. All that thinking without actions and
results are then wasted.
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Once you acknowledge your own strengths and weaknesses, then the
next step is applying inferential thinking, ie deep and unconscious
brain thinking, metaphorically like automatic algorithmic
processing, as your brain cells fire up intensively and
interconnected with each other like a live network of
interconnecting mini-computers, processing your years of collected
implicit knowledge, which influences the scope and quality of your
formal and experience based learnings.
Inferential Thinking
Inferential thinking can be considered like a conclusion inferring technique. Typically, from your evidence
based analysis findings, you ‘draw out’ the logical conclusion (Lumen, 2020). The underlying abstract thinking
process in your headspace, is called metacognition. Metacognition is the ability of your brain to recognise
bigger picture patterns from your brain’s information processing. In that brain processing, the accuracy of the
information, which is your analysis findings, is important. When you do not understand how you came to your
analysis findings and also do not understand the underlying contexts clearly, then your brain will just process
value information and spit out a conclusion statement that is wishy washy. When assessed, you received
feedback, saying your conclusion does not logically connect with your analysis findings or body discussions.
Inferential thinking is your deep brain processing ability.
Gauging where this cognitive ability is at (weak, moderate or strong) is important, because being aware of
this capability is the first step for self-improvement planning. Some of us spend great effort and time studying
hard and still find it hard to fully comprehend the meanings of information. When doing assignments, we are
not sure:
• what topics to choose or keyword to research.
• which research information pieces to select,
• how to use research findings in an analytical manner in our writing
• when to stop covering a certain topic
• if our answer sounds right.
Conversely, we may be overly sure or confident of our abilities and get really surprised and sometimes
annoyed when we receive poor assignment outcomes. These are signs that your metacognition ability needs
addressing. When you let ego come into your thinking, it is easy to deny this cognitive issue and blame the
learning challenges elsewhere.
Researchers have found that inferential abilities are linked to reading comprehension (Soto, Gutiérrez de
Blume, Jacovina, McNamara, Benson, Bernardo Riffo Richard Kruk, 2019). When this literacy skill is lacking,
your brain has not been adequately trained to contextualise (give meaning to) the text, visual, audio or
feeling information you read or experience, never mind storing it in your knowledge memory. Reading and
comprehension is an information pattern processing skill, not totally reliant on memorizing and recalling
grammar, punctuation and spelling rules, but also knowing language construction techniques and how to
research to recall such knowledge if unsure or forgotten.
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Researchers recommend that one can improve their metacognition abilities, though “thinking about thinking”.
This meta thinking approach is executed in two phases (Malamed, 2019):
1. Knowledge of cognition phase – the aim is knowing what you know (and do not know) when you are
thinking. This brain processing phase has three work breakdown tasks: knowing the factors that
influence one’s own performance; knowing different types of learning strategies to use; knowing what
strategy or strategies work/s for specific situations.
2. Regulation of cognition phase – the aim is consciously and continuously planning and managing your
thinking development. This brain processing phase involves setting goals and learning strategy
planning; monitoring and controlling the execution of chosen learning strategies; and regularly
evaluating the situational effectiveness of the chosen learning strategies.
Here are some other useful tips from Malamed (2019), to help improve your metacognition ability in reading
and comprehending the communicated meanings:
• “Knowing the limits of your own memory for a particular task and creating a means of external support.
• Self-monitoring your learning strategy, such as concept mapping, and then adapting the strategy if it is
not effective.
• Noticing whether you comprehend something you just read and then modifying your approach if you did
not comprehend it.
• Choosing to skim subheadings of unimportant information to get to the information you need.
• Repeatedly rehearsing a skill in order to gain proficiency.
• Periodically doing self-tests to see how well you learned something”.
Monash University also has:
1. self-directed learning resources to help you improve your reading skills – which can be found in
https://www.monash.edu/rlo/study-skills/reading-and-note-taking/effective-reading-strategies and
2. drop-in services in https://www.monash.edu/library/skills/resources/we-will-support-you/drop-in .
You can also contact the FIT learning skills advisors to assist in the matter - Bei-En Zou and Mario Sos.
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Reflective Report
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ASSIGNMENT BRIEF
Now that you understand:
• What reflective thinking is;
• How it deconstructs your past experiences into lifelong learning for continuous improvement;
• The different models of reflective thinking; and
• The underpinnings of critical and inferential thinking skills in reflective thinking;
You are about to embark on the journey of becoming a reflective project manager.
Becoming a proficient project manager needs commitment to reflective practice.
The assignment will require you, through executing 2 learning tasks, to reflect and document these thoughts.
The reflective process, as a whole, will require you to:
1. Choose or design your reflective thinking approach
2. Apply reflective questioning, whose answers frame your reflections
3. Apply critical thinking to complete the 2 tasks
4. Apply inferential thinking to conclude an improvement outline, which you then detail into a mini project
plan.
Preliminary Work
Firstly, identify your reflective thinking framework. You may choose one of the discussed models, or find
another one through research, or mix these models to customize your own. Think about whether you want to
use one common framework across tasks, or specific one for each task.
Actioning Reflective Thinking Writing Your Reflection Repor t
You need to separate out executing reflective thinking and writing your reflection report. Both activity streams
involve writing:
1. You reflect on each task’s experience and write your thoughts
2. You use the reflections to write your final Assignment 3, in a
coherent and easy to read writing structure that demonstrates
your overall reflections, including responses to given questions.
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TASK 1
Reflective Q1 – Where am I in my critical thinking and writing capabilities?
1. Read the given news article, The New Art of i-War, in Appendix 1
2. Summarize the key concepts of the paper and indicate what is the overall message the author wants
to communicate to its news readers.
3. Analyse the original paper, guided by your summarised highlights and:
• How the key concepts correspond to the types of risks you have learnt?
• How these risks interact to relate to the risks in your Assignment 2A project?
• How would you mitigate these risks in your Assignment 2A project?
4. Reflect on your experience in executing (1) to (3) and answer the following reflective questions:
• Discuss where you are in your critical thinking and writing capabilities, justifying your own
evaluations;
• Infer and identify a self-improvement plan that you can follow up during the semester break
and after;
• Question yourself whether you are likely to follow through or not and explain why.
TASK 2
Reflective Q2 – How well did I learn PM, therefore truly understand the integration
concepts of PM?
1. Research and explain what project integration mean.
2. Review what you have written in the Assignment 2A Project Plan and explain how project integration
works, bringing all your planned knowledge areas, plus the ones excluded from your plan together in
execution, as one seamless project management workflow model. You are not allowed to ask your
tutors how to approach this question. However, you can review Assignment 1’s learning resources,
marking feedback and improvement actions that you may have taken, to help you find the leads and
tools to do this task by yourself.
3. Reflect on your experience in completing (1) and (2) and answer the following reflective questions:
a. How confident are you about your answer and justifying your response?
b. What challenges you encountered or areas you were confident of in completing the task?
c. How many challenges you felt you have resolved yourself?
d. How did you feel about your self-learning ability when completing (1) and (2)?
4. Identify at least another two reflective questions of your own you would answer, to help you
understand your learning gaps in performing this task.
5. Share these learning gaps and identify what improvement actions you can consider taking.
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Task 3
1. Use both the tasks’ reflective documentation to write your final report in 10-12 pages
including Reference List and excluding cover sheet and table of contents.
2. Your report should include your responses to Task 1 and Task 2 and your reflective analysis
of your learning; you should also include your learning improvement plan and learning gap
analysis.
3. Proof-read, check there is Table of Contents, reference criteria have been met, cover sheet
has your student ID and name , class day and time, tutor’s name before you submit.
REPORT TEMPLATE
1. Introduction
2. Reflective Questions Structure
3. Reflective Thinking Model
4. Task 1
4.1. Art of iWar Analysis
4.2. Self-Reflections
5. Task 2
5.1. Project Integration Explanations
5.2. Self-Reflections
6. Self-Improvement Plan
7. Conclusion
8. Reference List
(Note: You can deepen heading structures (and recommend that you apply TEEL paragraphing technique) to
increase readability of your writing)
RUBRIC
Introduction (5%)
State (a) the specific learning purpose of the assignment and
(b) a scope-outline of its discussions
Reflective Questions Structure (5%)