Portfolio Assessment For Event Management Course

Description of the Event

During my course in this university, I have encountered a large number of events and incidents that help me grow and enhance my problem solving skills. Furthermore, I also learned to apply suitable models and techniques in order to address various requirements and manage events as per the requirements.

This report is mainly a reflective journal that involves the description of an event that I was involved in and the techniques and models that I used during the occurrence of the event.

The particular event that I have chosen for discussion in this report is a week-long art and handicrafts fair hosted by GSM London in the event ground. In this event managed by the students of GSM, various art and handicrafts items created by the rural people of various parts of Europe including UK were brought for exhibition and selling. The entire event was managed by the students who took active role in the execution of the event including setting up the event ground, preparing various stalls, inviting participants from various parts of Europe, managing event costs and others (Kumashiro 2015). While the event was hosted to promote rural handicraft and art, it was also a part of our learning module to gain firsthand experience of managing the event and learn the application of various models and tools related to business and project management.

The event was very much significant for me to gain firsthand experience in business management by managing the business and project management aspects of the event. Furthermore, I was also required to apply some reflective models in order to understand exactly what I learned from managing the event. Hence, I considered this event as one of major sources of my learning that will further help me develop in my academic as well as my future professional career.

While this event was hosted, I was assigned for the project management part of the event with specific emphasis on the business aspect of the event (including budget calculation, budget allocation and others). Hence, during the event, I deployed project management techniques to develop an accurate plan for the event.

As a requirement of the project, I developed the following work breakdown and allocated resources to determine the project budget.

The event was hosted by the university as a part of cultural as well as academic development of the students. While the students were exposed to the various arts and handicrafts around Europe, there were also provided with the opportunity to handle the event and gain management experience. When I first learnt about the event, I was excited to receive the planning and management responsibility for the event and immediately started enquiring about the requirements of my duties in the event.

After the event was over, in order to reflect on the event, I used Gibbs’ Model of Reflection that enabled me to analyze the lessons I gained from the project. I applied the model as explained below (Gould and Taylor 2017).

Description – The event was for hosting a one week long handicraft fair in which art and handicrafts specimens from all over Europe were to be displayed and sold.

Significance of the Event (Personal Reflection)

Feelings – I was excited about the event as I was eager to gain practical experience regarding the management of the business aspect of the events.

Evaluation – The good part of the experience was that I was able to work with my teammates and completed all the duties successfully. The bad part of the experience was that I made some mistakes regarding budget management and allocation as it was my first time involvement in such a scale of event.

Analysis – From the event, I learned that team work is essential in any significant scale venture that requires the involvement of a large number of people. Furthermore, I learned some important techniques for handling and managing budget for a particular project.

                                                              Figure 1: Gibbs’ Model of Reflection

                                                              (Source: Baldwin 2016, pp.25)

Conclusion – Although I ultimately completed the event successfully, there were some errors and problems that I faced during the same. Hence, I will not consider this project as entirely successful but will definitely use the valuable experience in future projects.

Action Plan – For future projects, I will use my valuable lessons I gained from this project and will try to avoid any major errors that I faced this time.

Although I used Gibbs’ Model for reflection, there are other models that can be used to reflect on a particular event. For instance, there are Kolb’s Model, NC Reflection Model, Schön’s Model and others (Marsick and Watkins 2015). All these models emphasize on different aspects of learning from a project. However, I found that Gibbs’ Model is more suitable for me as it is more detailed and also allows me to reflect on both positive and negative experiences in the project.

Learning through reflection has been very effective for me as I gained a lot of lesson from the event. In addition to gathering experience through practical work, I also learned what I did right and what I did wrong. I reflected on both where the positive parts gave me confidence and the negative parts gave me encouragement to never repeat the mistakes again in future ventures.

Conclusion

In this report, my learning process through reflection has been discussed with focus on the event that I was a part of during my course in this university. Participation in the event gave me a lot of confidence on myself as also valuable lessons that will help me greatly in my professional career.

References

Baldwin, M., 2016. Social work, critical reflection and the learning organization. Routledge.

Bevan, B., Gutwill, J.P., Petrich, M. and Wilkinson, K., 2015. Learning through stem?rich tinkering: Findings from a jointly negotiated research project taken up in practice. Science Education, 99(1), pp.98-120.

Easterby-Smith, M. and Cunliffe, A.L., 2017. From reflection to practical reflexivity: Experiential learning as lived experience. In Organizing reflection (pp. 44-60). Routledge.

García, O., Johnson, S.I., Seltzer, K. and Valdés, G., 2017. The translanguaging classroom: Leveraging student bilingualism for learning. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon.

Gould, N. and Taylor, I., 2017. Reflective learning for social work: research, theory and practice. Routledge.

Johns, C. ed., 2017. Becoming a reflective practitioner. John Wiley & Sons.

Kumashiro, K.K., 2015. Against common sense: Teaching and learning toward social justice. Routledge.

Luederitz, C., Schäpke, N., Wiek, A., Lang, D.J., Bergmann, M., Bos, J.J., Burch, S., Davies, A., Evans, J., König, A. and Farrelly, M.A., 2017. Learning through evaluation–A tentative evaluative scheme for sustainability transition experiments. Journal of Cleaner Production, 169, pp.61-76.

Marsick, V. and Watkins, K., 2015. Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace (Routledge Revivals). Routledge.

Taylor, E.W., 2017. Transformative learning theory. In Transformative Learning Meets Bildung (pp. 17-29). SensePublishers, Rotterdam.

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