HLTH 4925 Week 11 Seminar Capstone Reflection Example

From Describing Problems to Measuring Them: A Capstone Reflection That Argues One Change and Proves It From the Term's Work

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4925: Seminar in Reflective and Applied Learning

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

From Describing Problems to Measuring Them: A Capstone Reflection That Argues One Change and Proves It From the Term's Work

The Position

Eleven weeks of work in this seminar could be summarized assignment by assignment. That would not show what changed. My position is narrower: over the term, I moved from describing problems from experience to measuring them with evidence, and from claiming skills to showing where they are visible in my work. The rest of this paper proves that position from material already built, and it names the places where the change is incomplete.

Where I Started

The clearest picture of where I started is the original referral backlog proposal, written two terms before this seminar. Its aim was stated in terms of our workload, its measures were the numbers my supervisor already tracked and it contained no baseline. Reflecting on it in week 2, I saw that I had treated my experience of long waits as if it were evidence a reader would accept. The coding scheme from the first week places at its lowest level habitual action, in which a person uses existing routines without examining them (Kember et al., 2008), and the proposal was written at that level.

Evidence of the Change: Claims Checked Against Objects

In week 3 I checked the claim that my process map demonstrated analysis and found that it did not; it documented a process accurately but carried no data about performance. In week 5 I applied the same test to every program outcome and left two cells empty rather than filling them with a compliment from my supervisor. In week 6 I offered my strongest-rated piece, the policy brief, for classmates to press on and agreed that its caption should say traces rather than evaluates. Across these three weeks, the way I described my own work changed. Early in the term I would have called the map analysis; by week 8, my portfolio captions claimed only what a reader could point to. Research on self-assessment suggests that people's judgments of their own competence often diverge from external measures (Davis et al., 2006), and the seminar's artifact checks were a practical way of bringing my judgments closer to the evidence.

Evidence of the Change: Problems Measured

The week 4 applied case was the first time I used a course concept to explain a workplace problem with numbers rather than with impressions. Little's law joined what had seemed two separate complaints into one relationship, and showed that a temporary coordinator could only clear the backlog for a while because the coordinators ran near full capacity (Little, 1961). In week 10, the revised proposal added a baseline drawn from 120 referrals, a median of 11 business days, which was longer than the week I had assumed. That difference between my impression and the data is the most concrete evidence that the change was real: had I not measured, I would have been wrong about the size of the problem I knew best.

Evidence of the Change: Plans Built From Evidence

The week 9 career plan applied the same habit to my own future. Instead of choosing a goal and justifying it, I listed what the outcome map showed, added what the gap analysis found and chose patient access supervisor as the step the evidence supports, explicitly rejecting practice manager because my financial evidence is thin. Each step in the plan produces an artifact and names someone who can judge it. That structure would not have occurred to me at the start of the term, when I assumed my four years of experience spoke for themselves. It also led me to reject a goal several classmates chose, which I would not have done without the map in front of me.

Where the Change Is Incomplete

The change is not complete. My leadership cell is still empty, and the analysis planned to fill it has not been written. My finance evidence still uses textbook figures. The data in the applied case were approximate, and the month of collected data that would test the explanation has not been gathered. A reviewer reading this paper should conclude that I have changed how I approach problems and claims, not that I have closed every gap. Portfolio research suggests that the value of reflective portfolios lies in this kind of honest connection between evidence and learning, not in a complete record of competence (Buckley et al., 2009).

Why This Change and Not Another

The term's work could support other positions. I could argue that I became a better writer, since the policy brief and memos are clearer than my early work. I could argue that I learned to use operations concepts. I chose the shift from describing to measuring because it runs through every artifact, from the week 2 reflection to the week 10 revision, and because it explains the other changes: my writing became clearer partly because I stopped asking readers to trust my experience, and my use of concepts improved because I started testing them against data.

What I Will Carry Forward

I will carry one practice forward: before I describe a problem or a skill, I will ask what a skeptical reader would need to see, and then produce it or narrow my claim. At work, that means pulling a baseline before proposing a change. In my portfolio, it means captions that claim only what the artifact shows. In my career, it means applying for the role my evidence supports and building evidence for the next one. The seminar did not give me those skills from nothing; it gave me the habit of checking, and the habit is what changed.

One test of this position will come after the term ends. If, six months from now, my huddle notes include baselines and my portfolio captions still claim only what each piece shows, the change was real. If I have slipped back into describing problems from memory, this reflection will have overstated it. I have written the position so that it can fail, which is the strongest evidence I can offer that I mean it.

References

Buckley, S., Coleman, J., Davison, I., Khan, K. S., Zamora, J., Malick, S., Morley, D., Pollard, D., Ashcroft, T., Popovic, C., & Sayers, J. (2009). The educational effects of portfolios on undergraduate student learning: A Best Evidence Medical Education (BEME) systematic review. BEME Guide No. 11. Medical Teacher, 31(4), 282-298. https://doi.org/10.1080/01421590902889897

Davis, D. A., Mazmanian, P. E., Fordis, M., Van Harrison, R., Thorpe, K. E., & Perrier, L. (2006). Accuracy of physician self-assessment compared with observed measures of competence: A systematic review. JAMA, 296(9), 1094-1102. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.296.9.1094

Kember, D., McKay, J., Sinclair, K., & Wong, F. K. Y. (2008). A four-category scheme for coding and assessing the level of reflection in written work. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 33(4), 369-379. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701293355

Little, J. D. C. (1961). A proof for the queuing formula: L = λW. Operations Research, 9(3), 383-387. https://doi.org/10.1287/opre.9.3.383