Action Plan

Meta-Reflection 2 : Action Plan

Your meta-reflection on your action plan will provide readers with an understanding of the knowledge, strengths, and insights you have gained from this learning experience. This paper should describe what you learned from the Action Plan, how the learning connects to larger personal and/or social goals, and how the knowledge/skills/insights gained from the experience apply to other areas of your life.

Below are guidelines for meta-reflection for creating an Example of Work. The headers for each section—Overview, Importance, Skills Gained, Lessons Learned, and Impact—were developed over the course of several years of research. They are meant to both facilitate and demonstrate your capacity for critical, integrative, adaptive, and systems-based thinking. When completed, the collection of examples of work/meta-reflections will clearly illustrate both your explicit and tacit knowledge. The collection of these pages will:

• demonstrate how your knowledge and skills have evolved and adapted within and across different contexts, and
• illustrate self-reflection, problem-solving, critical thinking, and systems-based “big picture” thinking.

Overview or Description

This section’s purpose is to provide the reader with a brief and compelling snapshot of the nature and importance of the Action Plan experience. By briefly describing the context and the impact/value of the work, this section demonstrates your reflective capacities, and inspires readers to keep reading the rest of the page. It is important to strike a balance between describing the experience, articulating the purpose and goals of your work, and summarizing why it was valuable to you. As people move from one Example of Work page to another and read each description/overview section (which is the first thing they see on a portfolio page), they should be able to discover a thread that links all of the Example of Work pages together. You may want to consider:

• What are/were the major tasks you are/were spending your time on?
• What are/were the project’s overall goals?
• How has your work helped to achieve those goals?
• What do you find as the most engaging aspect of the work/experience?
• Describe something you have learned or an ‘a-ha’ moment you have had.
• Are there any particular experiences or moments you feel proud of?

Importance

The purpose of this section is to demonstrate how your Action Plan experience connects to larger, “big-picture” goals, concerns, issues, and/or ideas (personally, socially, educationally, and so on) or the impact the work has had on others. Making these connections illustrates that you are capable of “integrative” or “systems-based” thinking and informs the reader why your work was important beyond the confines of the immediate experience. For instance, how the Action Plan addressed your learning goals, facilitated institutional change, or enhanced group or community understanding or development. Examples from other student portfolios include:

• How an internship experience gave the portfolio student the background and skills needed to successfully manage a complex project with multiple stakeholders.
• How a student’s leadership experience within a student organization provided the group with the direction and guidance needed for the group to be successful in reaching their goals.

Guiding Questions for “Importance” Section

• How or why is the work relevant to “big picture” goals in terms of your own learning, or to someone/something else?
• What is the need, gap or challenge being addressed and why do you think it exists?
• What do you see as the potential impact or outcome of your work?
• What positive feedback have others provided about this work/experience?

Skills Gained or Demonstrated

This section demonstrates the learning that occurred within the context of the assignment -what you did and what was learned as a result, both personally and professionally. It is helpful for you to begin writing this section by listing what you did in the order you went through the experience, and then what your learned and why. Many students find it helpful to use a bulleted list to describe the specific skills or capacities they developed for each experience. Many have found the “Skills Inventory” handout or searching the internet helpful for identifying specific skill language (The Skills Inventory handout is offered electronically in your MPortfolio Ctools site).

Guiding Questions for “Skills Gained” Section

• What tasks did you engage in?
• What was an example of a difficult or challenging experience? How did you handle it and what kinds of decisions did you make?
• How did you identify and respond to different types of expectations, criteria, situations or people in this work?

Making Connections or Lessons Learned

This section is intended to convey how the learning from this experience has influenced other areas of your life or work. For instance, if the “skills gained” section provides a snapshot of your work in a leadership role, then here you can describe how this experience connects to other areas of their life – for instance, how it gave you the foundation or confidence to take on additional leadership roles and responsibilities in other contexts, or how it taught you about the importance of collaborating with others or how to delegate tasks.

Guiding Questions for “Lessons Learned” Section

• How does this learning experience address your overall learning or professional goals?
• What opportunities were created as a part of this learning experience for you to learn something you didn’t already know? What can you do better or differently because of this experience?
• How will this experience shape how you may approach things in the future?
• Have you applied or used what you learned in other areas? If so, then describe.

Impact of the Project/Work

This section, which is sometimes combined with the “importance” section, describes the influence or impact your work has had on yourself (in terms of their own professional development, or life goals,) or others; this could include examples of how groups, organizations or communities were affected by a project, program, research effort, or volunteer commitment the student described in the Example of Work.

Visual Element

The visual element (image, diagram or picture) usually captures some theme, context, or poignant moment illustrated in the Example of Work. These elements can be abstract or concrete, personally created or taken from the public domain.

All images need meaningful alt-tags. Remember to include photo credits.

For more info, view the full guidelines for meta-reflection-2