Penguins - Event Management And Learning Models

Introduction to Penguins - Event Management Organization

Penguins is an Event Management organization operating from Windsor, UK which manages many different types of events including business conferences, award ceremonies, exhibitions, trade fairs, and product launches. The company had taken up a project for a big client for organizing a solo trade fair. The objectives behind organizing the trade fair were exploration of the market to discover niche opportunities and assess competitiveness of the business, build relationships with contractors and suppliers, test acceptance of the company products in the market and expand the distribution network. The project involved preparation, logistics management, promotion, planning and execution of the client event (Penguins, 2018).

Transdisciplinary learning models define the ways students can learn and expand their understanding of how the world works. Some very popular transdisciplinary models that can be used by students to decide on their approach to learning include Gibbs reflective model and Kolbe model of reflection.

Gibbs reflective cycle can be used as a framework for reflective writing. The model identifies six stages of reflection including description, feeling, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. Description stage involves exploration of what has happened. Once what is done is understood, the feeling attained after the first stage about project is explored. An initial evaluation of the project is done after this and the resulting experience is then critically analysed. The lessons that are learnt from the whole reflective learning experience are then recorded and conclusions are made. In the conclusion, the learning gaps are also discovered based on which an action plan for the future improvement of the learning and associated experience would be made for the student  (Allen, et al., 2010).

Kolbe’s model of reflection is another popular model that divides learning activities into our phases including concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and new methods testing. Concrete experience involves activities like team building, project planning, project evaluation, and decision-making. During this stage of learning, project team can identifies tasks that are required to be done and people who would be involved in doing these tasks. At this phase, the project team is built and data is collected on the project from the brainstorming sessions that are conducted between the project team members  (Alonge, et al., 2016).

After gaining an initial understanding of the project team, tasks and discussions on strategies, the student would reflect upon the learning through the use of certain reflective tools like reflective log, feedback, and critical incident diary. For preparing the documents, feedback is taken from the tutor and the insights are recorded in these tools or documents as evidences. This stage helps in understand how students learn, what they leaned, and if there was a scope for improvement.

Transdisciplinary Learning Models for Students

The next stage of reflection is conceptualization, new assumptions are made on the learning capabilities of the student. The lessons learnt from the project reflection are summarized and interpretations are made on how objectives of the project are achieved. The new methods that are developed in the conceptualization stage based on the learning, are tested in the last stage as per the Kolbe model.

The key objective of learning method is to gain the communication skills and thus, some models that help in assessing communication skills may be explored here. Communication skill assessments involve an inventory of questionnaires that can be used for testing the communication skills of a student. As the project involved a professional experience in which the student had to communicate within a team, the interpersonal communication would be developed. Some of the interpersonal communication skills tests include:

• Communication flexibility Scale (CFS) which tests the adaptability and flexibility of a student using eight scales measuring a student on some critical communication functions including conflict management, comforting, ego support, regulation, referential capacity, conversational skills, narration, and persuasion.
• Communicative adaptability Scale (CAS) test uses a six factor likert scale to assess a student on factors like social composure, social experience, disclosure, articulation, and wit. CAS dimensions relate to the cognitive complexity, communication satisfaction, communication style, shyness, involvement, attractiveness, and relationship maintenance(Spitzberg, 2003).
• Conversational Appropriateness and Effectiveness (CAE) assess perceptions of communicators on effectiveness and appropriateness. The items that are assessed in appropriateness include awkwardness, embarrassment, and impression from communication while effectiveness is testing through referential control, satisfaction, and goal achievement.
• Conversational Skills Rating Scale (CSRS) accommodates certain assumptions on communication competence such as it is the judgement of quality, it varies molarly and that judgements can be separated.
• Interpersonal Communication Competence Scale (ICCS) reflects upon some interpersonal skills like self-disclosure, empathy, social relaxation, altercentrism, expressiveness, supportiveness, interaction management, immediacy, and environmental control. This test has an appeal because of its representativeness and validity(Purhonen, 2012).

Preparation 

During the preparation phase of the project, the requirements of the solo trade fair project were gathered. These included the specifications of the products of the client organization, production capacities of the business, deliverables, logistical requirements and promotional needs. Based on these requirements, a project plan was developed for the solo trade fair event. The tasks that were planned at this stage of the project included:

• Location, budget, and exhibit decision.
• Arrangement of transportation for event decors, props, facilities and equipments
• Developing and securing contracts for designing stands and furnishing for the trade fair
• Ordering furniture, décor, furniture, plants, name boards, and prefabricated elements
• Planning the staff selection and developing staff training
• Preparation of guest lists and ticket dispatches
• Identification and documentation of on-site requirements like booth construction, stand booking, internet provision, fair office construction, parking availability, housekeeping, volunteering, cataloguing, invitation cards, cashier, registration counters, site publicity banners and marks, first aid station, visitor lounge, courier desk, travel desk, and information centre.
• Identification and documentation of off-site requirements like hotels, media, transportation, banners, hoarding, financing, marketing, and government permissions

Implementation

In the implementation stage, the lessons gained that were recorded through the logs during the preparation phase were used for making improvements in the approaches to project management and the logs were further updated. Lessons include an understanding of the skills gained by the student including communication and analytical skills.

For gaining an understanding on the communication skills achieved from the project, Interpersonal Communication Competence test was taken. The scores obtained in sections 1,2,3 & 4 were 24, 14, 10, and 16. These scores referred to skills of sending clear messages, listening skills, ability to exchange feedback, and handling emotional interactions (Rubin, et al., 2009). The scores below 15 suggest the need for improvement, scores up to 21 suggest maintenance of consistency and high scores suggest that the respective communication area is the strength of the student. From the scores, I could identify ability to send clear messages as my strength area while I needed serious improvements in ability to exchange feedback and listening skills. I was doing fairly well in my capability to handle emotional interactions but I need to be more consistent in the same (Learning Dynamics, 2002).

Once obtaining the scores, I had decided to work to improve while I was in the stage of implementation of the event management project of the company.

Gibbs Reflective Cycle for Reflective Writing

The next activity that was done was the implementation of the project plan that was developed during the preparation stage. For this implementation, the project team was divided into logistics, marketing, event arrangements, audience management, ticket and entry management, catering and other facility management and help desk management selecting the team members based on their skills, experiences, and roles in the organization (Campbell, 2017).

While assigning the tasks, the stakeholder requirements were first understood using brainstorming in which a few representative potential trade fair attendees were also involved. Major stakeholders identified on the project included:

• Executive Director of the client organization who was to approve the project budget and timeline
• Event management from the event company who was a process oriented person focused on getting project output
• The transportation contractor who delivered the goods on the event site before the event.
• Trading organizations that needed some facilities to be provided in the event for supporting their business presentations and exhibits such as sound system, stalls, hoardings, and so on.

Skills developed 

Different members of the project team were assigned different tasks based on their experience, knowledge, and skills in event management. As the learning approach was transdisciplinary, I moved through different roles only as an assistant. I was not put on a single role but was in a rolling arrangement such that I kept moving from teams to teams in different weeks to learn different areas of the work as a project trainee. Specific activities that I participated during my time with the event management team included planning schedule, takin decisis on the display of products, briefing the designer of he requirements, arranging the stands and its cleaning, preparing tenders for getting contractors to work, preparing guest lists, planning advertisement strategy or the event, preparation press releases, and follow up with the event attendees after it was executed.

On the project, I was involved in the task of negotiation with team members and suppliers which helped me learn the negotiation skills. At one point in the project while responsibilities were planned for the volunteers, there were conflicts in setting responsibilities and the project manager got it resolved. I was observant in learning how conflicts are responded to and thus, could gain some insights on it.

As I was also involved in managing audience and taking their feedback, it helped me in learning how customers or event attendees are managed in an event management project. Although, I was neve put directly before the client to question on requirements, I was involved so I could learn how deals are negotiated with the clients.

Analysis and evaluation

Learning contract is a kind of agreement between the learner and the tutor. The learning objective of the current assignment is to attain communication skills. The project participation  helped in developing certain interpersonal skills in the following ways:

Team Work: I was involved in the work with six different teams at the event. This needed me to collaborate with the team members closely. This helped me learn team management through social interactions that were very constructive  (Anderson, 2000).

Kolbe's Model of Reflection for Learning

Problem Solving: During the project, there were several problems faced by the team such as delays in the deliveries of the equipments by the suppliers before the event set-up,  sudden leave taken by one of the core team members needing changes in the team responsibilities building up pressures, and lack of sufficient staff for handling the audience at the time of the event. All these events needed project manage to take steps for resolution in which I was also involved and thus, I could learn more about the problem solving skills in a real working situation.

Time Management: As the event needed a lot of activities to be completed and at the same time, I also had to keep my lessons recorded to ensure that I could do the reflection effectively. This pushed me to manage time effectively. Thus, learnt the time management skills on the project.

Communication Skills: As the team members had to collaborate very closely to be able to make things go smooth, this needed good communication skills from them and in the process of participation, even I was able to learn communication skills and become a better communicator  (Hadi, 2016).

Portfolio of evidence 

Log books

Project Log

Date of Event	What was the Development Activity?	What was I expecting to learn?	What have I learned?	How will I apply this learning?
	Gathering stakeholder requirements	Learned to understand stakeholder requirements	Good listening skills are needed for gathering stakeholder requirements	I can use the listening skills I gained to learn better through communication in future
	Task allocation to the team	I could learn how teams are selected and how their responsibilities are divided	While deciding team responsibilities, the project manager has to be more objective and not favour any one to be fair with the team	I can use the skill of human resource task allocation in future when I would have a team to guide as a project manager
	Event activities management	I expected to learn how an event is managed during the show	I learned how different activities are organized and completed within a very short time with effective coordination and participation from a large number of people involved in the event management work	I can utilize lessons learned at this stage for managing events as a project manager in future

Weekly Log

Week No.	1	Dates
Day/Date		Nature of Work and Time
Activities Requirements gathering		Lessons I learnt how stakeholder requirements are gathered and what stakeholders expect and need from an event management company. Various stakeholders who were involved were client organization representatives, suppliers, spectators, project team members, and volunteers. I could relate the experience with the theories I had learnt about the process of requirement gathering and understanding stakeholder needs. While during lessons learned at the college, I could only learn what modes and methods could be used for communication with stakeholders but actual lesson on how stakeholders can be talked to and understood was only learnt at the time of the event
Week No.		2
Day/Date		Nature of Work and Time
Activities Develop Project plan		Lessons While developing the project plan, I  could learn about planning process on event projects and apply the principles learnt during the planning process. I could use the project management templates as the guide for development of the plan.

Critical incident diaries 

Incident Log Sheet

Date	Time	Event/Action	What did I learn?
		A team member did not agree with the given  responsibilities that were added after one team member left the project suddenly	Project management needs a strong coordination and cooperation if the project work has to be completed smoothly.
		The supplier material got delayed which put a severe pressure on the team working on getting things done fast.	I learnt that project activities do not always go smooth as per schedule and there can be may factors causing delays and thus, the project plan must keep a buffer to make up for such delays and a mitigation plan must be ready. This puts risks management at the heart of the project.

Feedback

Based on the feedback given by the employer and my record of the lessons learned from the project, I was given some recommendations for improvement in my communication skills for future development. These included:

• I need to work more on my listening skills and exchanging feedbacks while talking to others at work as was reflected through the communication competency test.
• I need to have more understanding of the learning models and how they work in practice so that I can do a better reflection and use the skills best to learn on the job
• I need to learn to be more cooperative and accommodating while working with a team and should understand their views as suggested by my employer
• Understanding how the theories and lessons can be actually applied on the project needs is complex and I need to be more open to learning
• I need to make my learning logs more specific with details added so that I can learn better and more practically through the project participation
• Implementation of learning I actual practice needs a combination of a lot of interdisciplinary skills and lessons which needs a holistic thinking and thus, I was suggested to be more open to gaining experiences with an open mind and try connecting the dots or improved learning.

References

Allen, B., Crosky, A. & Yench, E., 2010. A model for transformation: A transdisciplinary approach to disseminating good practice in blended learning in a science faculty, s.l.: The University of New South Wales.

Alonge, O., Frattaroli, S., Davey-Rothwel, M. & Baral, S., 2016. A TRANS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH FOR TEACHING IMPLEMENTATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE IN PUBLIC HEALTH. Pedagogy Health Promot. , 2(2), pp. 127-136.

Anderson, J. R., 2000. Problem Solving and Learning , s.l.: Science Watch.

Campbell, J., 2017. Interpersonal Communication Scale (ICS), s.l.: Academia.

Cleland, D. J. et al., 2016. Using theory to improve communication: designing a communication skills training package for medicine counter assistants. International Journal of Pharmacy Practice, 25(4), pp. 253-262.

Gibbs, G., 1988. Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods., s.l.: Oxford Further Education Unit.

Hadi, M. J., 2016. Theories in Developing Oral Communication for Specific Learner Group, s.l.: Mataram Nahdlatul Wathan University.

King, G., Tucker, M., Desserud, S. & Shillington, M., 2009. The Application of a Transdisciplinary Model for Transdisciplinary Model for. Infants & Young Children, 22(3), p. 211–223.

Learning Dynamics, 2002. Interpersonal Communication Skills Inventory, s.l.: Learning Dynamics.

Penguins, 2018. Penguins are a creative event agency passionate in delivering exceptional results for our customers. [Online]
Available at: https://www.penguins.co.uk/about-us
[Accessed 1 May 2018].

Purhonen, P., 2012. Interpersonal Communication Competence and Collaborative Interaction in SME Internationalization. s.l.:JYVÄSKYLÄ.

Spitzberg, B. H., 2003. Methods of Interpersonal Skill Assessment. s.l.:Routledge