How to Write Gibbs Reflective Cycle? Implement it & Draft Better Assignments

Do you ever thought why your professor asks you to write an assignment on “Gibbs reflective cycle?”

Of course, yes!

You always feel stressed while working on it because you are not aware of the motive behind it.

Yes! You read it right!

Simply searching “How to write Gibbs reflective cycle?” will never solve your problem until you understand its motive well. The professor wants you to learn from your past assignment writing experiences and improve your current performance.

OK! So, before we discuss it in detail, let’s take an overview of what is a reflective cycle.

What is the Gibbs Reflective Cycle?

Gibbs reflective cycle developed by Graham Gibbs in 1988. It is designed in a way to give structure to learning from experiences. It offers a framework through which one can examine experiences and allow a person to learn and plan from previous things that either went well or not.

6-Stages of Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle

The following are the 6 stages that a Gibbs reflective cycle covers. This model will help you to think through all the stages of past activity or experience.

Stage 1 - DESCRIPTION of the past experience.

Stage 2 - FEELINGS and thought about the experience.

Stage 3 - EVALUATION of the experience either good or bad.

Stage 4 - ANALYSIS to make some sense of the situation.

Stage 5 - CONCLUSION about the specific situation or the way of working.

Stage 6 - ACTION PLAN to deal with a similar situation in the future.

About the Reflective Model:

This model is the best way to work with experience. It can either be a stand-alone experience or a particular situation you go through frequently. Gibbs usually support its use in repeated situations but, you can apply the principles and stages for the single experience as well. Once you are done with the stand-alone experience, then your action plan will become more general and then you can decide, how you can apply the conclusion in the future.

For every stage, some of the questions are outlined below. You need not answer all of them but, you can use them as guidance to decide what sort of things should be included in your next assignment to make it a better one. So, here you go!

What Are the Different Elements of Gibbs Cycle?

The Gibbs model begins with the description and continues with feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan.

Element 1 - Description

Here you can discuss the situation, experiences, or event in detail without throwing light on the conclusion immediately. Here your only aim is to know “What happened?” You can ask the following questions to better describe the situation.

• What happened?
• When and where did it happen?
• Who was there?
• What did you do?
• What did other people do?
• What was the result of this situation?

Make sure that you should not miss the important details.Including every information is the key to understand the situation better.

Element 2 - Feelings

Here you can explore the feelings or thoughts that were triggered by the event. You can also include the thoughts of other people who were present at that time. The purpose is not to get detail information or judge anything. The core purpose is to know to get aware of that feeling. For that, you can include the following question:

• What did you feel before the situation take place?
• What did you feel during the situation take place?
• What do other people experience?
• What were you thinking during the situation?
• What did you feel after the event?
• What do you think other people think about the event right now?

Yes! It is quite difficult to know about the feeling of other people. So for that, you can use the technique of perceptual position & emphatic listening. This way you can know the actual feeling of others.

Element 3 - Evaluation

Now, you can do the evaluation of the Gibbs reflective cycle. Here you can easily assess which method worked or not. For that, you need to imagine, how things were at the time of the incident, and also note down the reactions of other people. After that, explain what you feel and learn from the incident. The following questions will help you conduct a proper evaluation:

• What was positive and negative about the situation?
• What were the things that go well?
• What were the things that didn’t go well?
• What was the other people’s contribution (positive or negative)?

These questions will easily help you evaluate the situation well. Also, you will come to know about the thinking perspective of others.

Element 4 - Analysis

This step is the best chance for you to make a sense of what happened and to find out what lesson you have acquired. Till now you were focusing on the details of the situation but, now you have the chance to extract meaning from it. This way you can perform well if the same situation arises in the future. So first, write down both the good and bad things happen and then analyze them separately. The questions on which you can think over are:

• Why did things go well?
• Why didn’t things go well?
• What sense does the situation make?
• What knowledge can be used to analyze/understand the situation?

We all know that a wise person always learns from his/her mistakes to become a better person. So, this is where you can combine the analysis with the evaluation to come to a conclusion.

Element 5 - Conclusion

Now you can make conclusions about what happened. For that, you can look back at yourself during that event and imagine what else could be done in that event. The information gathered will help you a lot to become a better person. This is the actual step where you summarize your learning and highlight the changes so that you can improve the outcome in the future. Remember, it should be a natural response. The questions that can help you with this are:

• What did you learn from the situation?
• What skills you need to develop and become a better person?
• What could have been a more positive situation for everyone out there?
• What else could have been done?

By answering these questions, you can avoid unwanted things in the future and come up with something great.

Element 6 - Action Plan

Finally, in the last step, you plan for what you would do differently in a similar situation in the future. While making an action plan include everything that can be practiced in the future. This way you can eliminate negative things that happened last time and it will be helpful for you to think about how you can act differently now. Sometimes realization is more than enough but a reminder is much better. For that, these question can be helpful:

• If you had to do the same thing now, then how will you tackle it?
• How will you develop the required skills?
• How can you make sure that you will act differently this time?

A well-structured plan will help you become efficient, and don’t forget to review the progress when you implement the action plan in the next event.

So, this is how you can motivate yourself using Gibbs reflective cycle process and then implement it to improve your assignment writing.

What is the Aim of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle?

Now, you will be wondering what is the main aim behind implementing Gibbs reflective cycle while writing an assignment. So, its aim is to help you become a better person by taking a lesson from previous mistakes. This way you will never feel demotivated from assignment failure instead learn some useful lesson from it. Such a thing will only happen if identified through Gibbs reflective cycle.

Are you Ready to Implement Reflective Cycle in Your Assignment?

So, now you have understood the concept behind the Gibbs model, so its time to implement it and come up with a better outcome this time. If still, you need any help, then you can avail assignment help service from us and we will take your academic performance to the next level.