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BusEco: Reflective essay

What is reflective writing in the context of Business and Economics?

A reflection is an assessment task that helps you to think about:

what you have experienced
why your experience unfolded in the way that it did
how you could do things differently next time, and
how you can apply what you’ve learned to future experiences, especially in your business career.

Reflective writing tasks therefore link your study and your future career closely. The ability to reflect on your own actions and behaviours is a key skill in both the university and the workplace.

For all business roles, the ability to observe previous experiences and outcomes, and to then implement changes or establish new practices, is particularly important.

4 essentials for reflective writing in Business and Economics View

Sample student reflective essay with marker’s feedback

Essay instructions provided to students

Use the knowledge you have accrued in this unit to write a reflective essay on the following topic:

What, in your opinion, is the importance of disequilibrium and how would the knowledge you have gained about disequilibrium and other key concepts in this unit help you in your career as an entrepreneur?

Length requirement: minimum of 1000 words.

Learning outcomes assessed

Can demonstrate understanding of the basic concepts related to economics.
Can apply knowledge about economics to workplace/employment situations.

Read the following example of a student’s reflective essay.

Check your understanding View

Activity 1: citing your source accurately

Activity 2: referencing your source accurately

Activity 3: outline the purpose and preview the structure of the essay

Activity 4: which essay plan will achieve the task’s requirements best?

The tutor also indicates that she thinks the student’s essay was either poorly planned or unplanned. Take a look at the three essay plans below and order them from best to worst. I.e. order the sequence so the plan that best addresses the task requirements is number one, and the least effective plan is and number three.

Essay plan 1

Intro
Para. 1: My opinion about disequilibrium
Para. 2: Knowledge I learnt about disequilibrium and other economic concepts
Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur
Conc.

Essay plan 2

Intro
Para. 1: Disequilibrium: importance in the context of an innovative start-up
- Summary of facets of disequlbm
- Identify 3 key aspects relevant to start-up: gap in market, the ‘disequlbm price’ and dynamic equilib, Walrasian general equlbm, providing examples or citations as needed
Para. 2: Key economic concepts & explanation of their relevance
- Scarcity
- Elasticity
- monopolies/competition
- Externalities/public goods
Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur
- Brief description of start-up
- Link between concepts in para 2 and entrepreneurial venture in its various stages of development
Conc.

Essay plan 3

Intro
Para. 1: Disequilibrium: importance and relevance to an innovative start-up
- Summary of facets of disequ
- Identify aspects relevant to start-up: gap in market, the ‘disequ price’ and dynamic equilib, Walrasian general equilibrium and how it applies to individual cases
- Include in the above examples of how each relevant aspect would apply to my start-up
Para. 2: Key economic concepts & explanation of their relevance
- Scarcity
- Elasticity
- monopolies/competition
- Externalities/public goods
- Examples of each one as it applies to my start-up
Para. 3: My career as an entrepreneur
- Description of start up and timeline of expected stages of development
- Relevance of concepts/theories to my start up:
--- Disequilibrium
--- Scarcity
--- Elasticity
--- monopolies/competition
--- Externalities/public goods
Conc

Drag and drop the Essay plan number to order that you think best addresses the task requirements.

Activity 5: Evaluate a reflective essay

Your feedback matters

We want to hear from you! Let us know what you found most useful or share your suggestions for improving this resource.

	You can use personal pronouns It’s okay to be subjective, and use words like ‘I’ and ‘me’. Reflective tasks are asking about your feelings, thoughts and observations. For that reason it’s generally fine to make them personal.
	Plan your essay Reflective essays require careful planning and a strategic structure to achieve their aims. Make sure you have a carefully-thought-out plan to achieve the essay’s goals as outlined in the instructions. Unless otherwise instructed, include an introductory section orienting your reader to the topic, your purpose for writing, and previewing the structure you’ll use to achieve that stated purpose. Follow this with body paragraphs that clearly state their topics/purposes, and a concluding section that sums up what the writing achieves and any final observations or ‘big picture’ comments.
	Demonstrate your learning Like most university assessments, reflective essays ask you to demonstrate your learning from the unit. This means you are likely to need to indicate how key concepts discussed in required readings, research literature and classes apply to real life - in this case your real life or experience!
	Always cite your sources Acknowledge the original source of information with citations and references whenever possible. This credits the originator and ensures that your work is ethical, and based on research - and therefore stronger than mere opinion or conjecture. You typically won't need to cite yourself as a source, but will need to cite any external sources you used in your assessment (i.e. sources of information produced by others).

Description	What happened?
Feelings	What was the writer feeling?
Evaluation	What did the writer think was positive or negative about the experience? What theories and ideas from the unit were relevant to the writer’s experience? Did the writer identify any elements as being particularly interesting or challenging?
Analysis	How else did the writer interpret the situation? Did it challenge, affirm or change the writer’s understanding? How accurately will theories and ideas from the unit apply to real-life situations
Conclusion	What else could the writer have done in the situation?
Outcomes or Action	What did the writer learn? What would the writer do differently next time? How will the new knowledge influence the writer’s future work?

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