PLANNING & REFLECTING

Planning and Reflecting at Post-Graduate Level

[Student name]

[Instructor name]

Table of Contents

Introduction1

Planning and reflecting at the postgraduate level2

Task 1: Developing the research strategy2

Task 2: Preparing a project plan4

Task 3: Reflecting on our research strategy and planning7

Conclusion10

References12

Appendix-I14

Introduction

Planning and reflecting are very important for developing study skills for postgraduate level learning. The postgraduate level of study requires that the student learns certain skills of learning that must be in line with the level of his education (which is postgraduate in this case). It is a truism that proper prior planning prevents poor performance. It is also true that improper planning will almost always lead to little or no learning at the postgraduate level.

Therefore, it becomes essentially important for the postgraduate level student to hone his planning and reflecting skills. The most important skills to be learnt at the beginning of the postgraduate study appear to be the researching skills, and the planning skills. Still, important is the need to reflect on researching and planning skills so that the progress in having learned the necessary skills can be self-examined. Without the reflection, it will never be possible to identify his level of grasp and learning of the basic skills (researching and planning skills in this case).

The significance of both researching and planning skills at the postgraduate level cannot be overemphasized. While, researching is an essential part of postgraduate study in any academic institution, planning is the way whereby it is possible to achieve the desired level of quality and performance, and even for mere survival. Researching is the requirement of most honours and other academic postgraduate programs in nearly all the disciplines. However, the need for planning is as ubiquitous as anything. There is not only the need to plan all work, study, and schedule it, but also applies to the art of planning after graduating from the university and going into the job market. Planning skills learned at postgraduate level are the key to effective performance and meeting tight deadlines and schedules. In certain complex situations, it will not be feasible to accomplish the goal or achieve the minimal level of performance without planning. Hence, the need for learning planning skills and applying them equally well cannot be denied.

Planning and reflecting at the postgraduate level

Task 1: Developing the research strategy

Any academic assignment or project cannot be accomplished without a solid research strategy in place beforehand. There has to be a strategy in place for everything and every act; it could be argued. However, academic research and writing requires a comprehensive, well-proven, research strategy to be in place. Every research assignment or project will have its unique requirements which would suggest slight modifications to the general research strategy. However, all in all, the research strategy for one project will be equally applicable to most of the other academic projects requiring primary or secondary research.

For this exact assignment, the research strategy that has been employed is very simple. It focused on the requirements of the assignment as regards the research component. Then it tried to ...