Journal – My Journey to App Success

14th Apr 201930th Apr 2019

Reflective Practice – Time to Catch Up!

In all honesty, I’ve struggled with reflective practice. I’m more comfortable facing questions requiring convergent thinking, with a definitive correct answer to strive for, than those requiring divergent thinking to reach an outcome judged with subjectivity. I’m somewhat uncomfortable with the uncertainty of whether I’m meeting expectations, and, being an analytical thinker, I find it difficult to know when to stop. I do proactively seek frequent feedback, which helps.

Until very recently, I’ve viewed reflective practice as an inconvenience – a distraction to my learning progress. This attitude, along with my focus on developing my Flutter capability, is largely responsible for my falling behind with my critical reflection journal. While I’ve recognised the value in understanding what went well (and should be applied again) and what didn’t (so do something different) in a given context, I’ve been puzzled by the apparent heavy emphasis for this module.

However, I’ve recently engaged with Anders Ericsson’s work on Deliberate Practice. It provoked a turning point for my perception. Building the following representation of Ericson’s cyclical process for incremental development of expertise helped me to see that the structured proactive approach to reflection stimulates creative insight and mental adaptation. This encourages elaboration, and the formation of associations between known and new concepts, to form alternative representations, and view situations from different perspectives to expedite learning.

I’m beginning to recognise that I should embrace reflective practice, as it could actually be my passport to app development mastery.

My Critical Reflective Journal will be brought up to date by 29^th April

Deliberate practice expedites learning. Active retrieval provides a self-assessment of my comprehension, which is fundamental in identifying improvement opportunity, enabling me to effectively plan future activity for efficient progress.

I have 3 weeks to post blog entries for weeks 5 to 11. Using my notes, I will dedicate 6-8 hours per week to achieving this.

Regular requests for Tutor/study group feedback, will help me continue to achieve incremental quality improvement.

Specific

I will post journal entries reflecting on the work that I have covered in weeks 5 to 11.

Measurable

I will use my Trello board to plan and implement weekly sprints, to include journal entries covering 2-3 weeks coursework, and chart my progress.

Achievable

Time is my key constraint, but I can afford to allocate 6-8 hours per week to achieve this. I’ve kept notes on everything that I’ve worked on.

Relevant

This module requires submission of a complete journal, and it’s a skill that I will use to assess and drive the progress of my continuing professional development.

Time-Bound

This will be done by 29^th April. I will complete entries covering 2 weeks coursework, each week, over the next 3 weeks

7th Apr 20192nd May 2019

Deliberate Practice

Keen to get a good handle on what reflective practice can do for me, I’ve been exploring the work of Anders Ericsson, and his concept of Deliberate Practice.

This has been a pivotal step in changing my perception and comprehension of the potential value that can be delivered by investing time in reflective practice. I think I’m beginning to properly get it.

While much of the material relating to reflective practice that I have previously consumed has helped me to form some level of understanding, I’ve found it to be a bit woolly, and difficult to draw solid conclusions that I can confidently apply to my own performance improvement efforts. However, I connected with Ericsson’s work on achieving expertise through the application of Deliberate Practice. he outlines a cyclical structure of definitive iterative steps that I can take in order to realise incremental progress toward mastery in any field, including my chosen field of app development:

Have a well defined specific goal.
Practice with intense focus – no distractions.
Seek immediate feedback on your practice.
Frequent discomfort – adjust your goal to push you slightly beyond your capability.

Quality mentoring to oversee this process will further expedite learning.

Ericsson dismisses the commonly held belief that an innate talent is the primary factor that dictates success (which gives me hope!), and offers the alternative theory that the key requirement is adaptability – a ‘gift’ which we all possess. He goes on to say that we are all ‘Homo Exercens’ – the practising man, committed to self-improvement.

He also clarifies that while practice is an integral part of improvement strategy, it is not an effective stand-alone strategy. He labels this approach “Naive Practice” and describes how spending hours repeating the same actions over and over again, will only deliver limited improvement, and never achieve expertise.

24th Feb 20192nd May 2019

Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice by David Boud

I found the paper “Using Journal Writing to Enhance Reflective Practice”, by David Boud,, helped me to develop my understanding of the importance of engaging in reflective practices

using-journal-writing-to-enhance-reflective-practice-by-david-boud-Download

For my own sake, I will outline here the key points that I took from reading this paper, which defines reflection in the following way:

Reflection has been described as a process of turning experience into learning. That is, of exploring experience in order to learn new things from it. Reflection has been described as ‘those intellectual and affective activities in which individuals engage to explore their experiences in order to lead to new understandings and appreciations.

Boud, Keogh and Walker 1985: 19

The following points are made to elaborate on the the ways in which reflection is an effective learning aid:

Reflection is about taking the raw, unprocessed material of experience and engaging with it to make sense of what has occurred
Exploring often messy and confused events and focusing on the thoughts and emotions that accompany them.
Events and experiences are recorded, processed and performed.
The basic assumption is that learning is always grounded in prior experience, and that any attempt to promote new learning must take account of this learning.
All learning builds on existing perceptions and frameworks for understanding, and links must be made between what is new and what already exists.
Past experiences profoundly affect perceptions of what is and what isn’t important.
Much of the benefit of participating in any event derives from how it can shape our participation to suit our goals.

This paper has helped me to secure at least an overview of the main purposes of engaging in reflective practice through journaling.

24th Feb 20197th May 2019

Critical Reflection and Journaling

The focus for this week is on critical reflection and journaling.

I hesitate to be so candid here, and I have no intention to offend, but I understand that this is a space where I am required to say what I feel, so here goes…

If I’m totally honest, my initial instincts tell me that critical reflection and journaling are a bit of a waste of my time. At this point, it feels like an academic exercise that is a distracting nuisance, robbing me of a considerable amount of time. Time that could be better spent developing critical skills.

My objectives for this course primarily lie in gaining a good range of skills that will enable me to develop well received, commercially lucrative apps. I therefore want to spend the vast majority of my time focusing on achieving coding expertise and development best practice, as well as improving my business and design capabilities.

Considering the marking schemes for this module, I notice the emphasis on reflective practices and self-analysis. I’m sure that is by design, rather than by accident, or purely for the box-ticking sake of it, and so, I am prepared to suspend my judgement, and approach creative reflection and journaling with an open mind. I will trust the process, actively strive to discover the value in it, and see if I can make critical reflection and journaling beneficial for me. I’m not saying that I’m right to feel the way I currently do – I’m merely saying this is how it is at leas at this point, but I am open to having my opinion changed.

I am new to critical reflection journaling, and for the past 3 weeks, I have struggled with it. Knowing what to share, and how to share it within this arena is not something that has come naturally to me, and I think that I have found it difficult to strike the right balance.

This situation has brought to mind the Johari Window model ( Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, 1955 ), that I was introduced to many years ago during a training course. The concept resonated with me at the time, and has stuck with me ever since. The model is used as a basis upon which to examine interpersonal and intrapersonal communication, and how relationships can be effected by the appropriateness (or otherwise) of what information is and isn’t shared between relevant parties.

The model provides a simple framework for us to think through the consequences, and decide which box is most appropriate for a piece of information, within a specific context. A lot of social media users would do well to consider the Johari Window model before posting!

I’m still not entirely convinced that much of the content of this post shouldn’t have remained in the ‘Hidden’ box (i.e. kept to myself), but, if nothing else, I can always learn from the reception it gets.

10th Feb 201913th Feb 2019

WordPress Tutorial

Having never blogged before, I followed my intuition to set up my critical reflective journal last week, as best I could. I knew what I wanted to do, but couldn’t figure out how to do it, without assistance. So, I thought it would be a good idea to invest some time in learning how to use WordPress properly this week.

I did search on Lynda and found the tutorial video series: “WordPress 5 Essential Training” with Morten Rand-Hendriksen

This was a great, and relatively short, introductory course, which quite quickly helped me to see that a WordPress post is built up using blocks. I had been trying to use it like a word processing packages and getting quite puzzled (and a little frustrated) when my text wasn’t behaving as I expected it to.

Following the guidance of the tutorial video series, I feel like I have now grasped the main concepts quite well, and have managed to publish a number of posts that are easily navigated through the menu, category and tag systems that I have in place.

As I work through the rest of the module I will continue to experiment and learn more of the capabilities of WordPress, in an effort to eventually achieve blog that serves me well and I am proud to present.