MBA Learning Journal Template (Kolb, Gibbs, Schön)

Growth goals with anchored self-ratings, weekly Gibbs-cycle entry, Kolb and Schön prompts, progress chart, monthly synthesis

MBA & Business SchoolStandardKolb 1984; Schön 1983; Gibbs 1988learning journalUpdated Oct 28, 2026

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How to use: Use it to turn MBA experiences (cold calls, team work, feedback, interviews) into lessons. Set two or three anchored growth goals first, then write one six-step entry a week. The main pitfall is a diary of the whole week with long description and no action plan.

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MBA Learning Journal: [Your name, programme and term]

A reflective learning journal for the MBA: growth goals for the term, a weekly entry structured on Gibbs' reflective cycle, prompts that move each entry around Kolb's experiential learning cycle, a monthly synthesis and a progress chart. It is for students who want to turn cases, team work, feedback, recruiting and leadership experiences into lasting lessons, and for courses that ask for a reflective journal or a leadership development plan. Source basis: experiential learning (Kolb 1984), the reflective practitioner (Schön 1983), the reflective cycle (Gibbs 1988) and goal-setting research (Locke and Latham 2002), written in our own words. The example entries are fictional. Replace every [bracketed] value and every row marked Example.

Document control

Field	Value
Owner	[Your name]
Programme and term	[MBA year 1, Term 2]
Period covered	YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY-MM-DD
Shared with	[Nobody / coach / course instructor, entries marked "shared" only]
Reviewed by	[Leadership coach or mentor, if any]
Version	[1.0]

1. Why reflect, and how

An MBA is dense with experience: dozens of cases a term, cold calls, team conflicts, simulations, coffee chats, interviews, a summer internship. Experience alone does not guarantee learning; the same mistake can be repeated for a whole term. Three models describe how experience becomes learning.

Kolb's experiential learning cycle (1984). Learning moves through four modes: concrete experience (something happens), reflective observation (you look back at it from several angles), abstract conceptualisation (you form or revise a general idea that explains it) and active experimentation (you try the idea out, which creates the next experience). Most busy students jump from experience straight to the next experience. The journal forces the two middle steps.

Schön's reflective practitioner (1983). Schön distinguished reflection-in-action, thinking on your feet while the situation is still unfolding (adjusting your argument mid cold call), from reflection-on-action, looking back afterwards. Schön's account centres on reflection-in-action; in this template the journal is deliberate reflection-on-action, used to prepare for better in-the-moment judgement next time.

Gibbs' reflective cycle (1988). Gibbs turned the idea into six writing steps: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. Each weekly entry in Section 3 follows these steps.

Growth goals. Goal-setting research summarised by Locke and Latham (2002) finds that specific, difficult goals lead to higher performance than vague "do your best" goals, provided there is feedback on progress and commitment to the goal. The weekly self-rating gives that feedback.

2. Growth goals for the term

ID	Growth goal	Why it matters to me	1 looks like	3 looks like	5 looks like	Evidence source
G1 (Example)	Contribute early and concisely in case discussions	Feedback: "strong analysis, but we rarely hear it"	Silent unless cold-called	Speak once per class, in the second half	Open or redirect the discussion with a crisp point in the first 20 minutes	mba/mba-class-participation-log
G2 (Example)	Build a DCF model without notes	Finance recruiting in the summer	Need a worked example to start	Build it with occasional reference to notes	Build and sensitise it in 45 minutes unaided	Timed practice
G3	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]	[ ]

3. Weekly entry

Week [ ], YYYY-MM-DD. Experience chosen: [one specific event]

Gibbs step	Prompt	My entry
1 Description	What happened? Who was involved, what did I do and say? Facts only.	[ ]
2 Feelings	What was I thinking and feeling before, during and after?	[ ]
3 Evaluation	What went well? What went badly? For whom?	[ ]
4 Analysis	Why did it go this way? Which course concept, model or feedback explains it? What would someone else in the room say?	[ ]
5 Conclusion	What general lesson do I draw? What else could I have done?	[ ]
6 Action plan	What will I do differently, when, and how will I know it worked?	[ ]

Goal ratings this week: G1 [1-5], G2 [1-5], G3 [1-5]. Reflection-in-action moment I noticed: [ ].

Example. Week 3. Experience: cold-called in the operations class on a fictional hospital emergency department case about patient flow at Tallow Creek Medical Center.

Gibbs step	Example entry
1 Description	Asked to open the case. I gave a three-minute summary of the facts, then the professor asked what I would recommend. I said I had not decided.
2 Feelings	Confident about the facts, anxious when asked for a decision; relieved when the next student took over, then frustrated with myself.
3 Evaluation	The summary was accurate, but it used my air time on things everyone had read. I added no analysis or recommendation.
4 Analysis	My preparation stopped at understanding; I never committed to an answer. In the operations card the bottleneck is triage, and I had computed that, but did not lead with it. The case prep sheet asks for a position before class, and I skipped that box.
5 Conclusion	An opening is a recommendation plus the one number that supports it, not a summary. Prepare a position even when unsure, and say how confident I am.
6 Action plan	For every case this week, write a one-sentence position and its key number at the top of mba/mba-case-prep-sheet. Try to speak in the first 20 minutes of two classes. Check in the participation log on Friday.

Goal ratings this week: G1 3, G2 2.

4. Progress chart

Example. Self-ratings for the two example goals over eight weeks (fictional). The mean rating for G1 rose from 2.5 in weeks 1 to 4 to 3.5 in weeks 5 to 8; G2 rose from 1.75 to 3.5. Excel: =AVERAGE(B2:B5) and =AVERAGE(B6:B9).

5. Monthly synthesis

Question	My answer
Which lesson appeared in more than one entry?	[ ]
Which action plans did I actually carry out? Which did I drop, and why?	[ ]
What feedback from others confirms or contradicts my self-ratings?	[ ]
Is any goal finished, or the wrong goal? What replaces it?	[ ]
One thing I now do automatically that I did not do a month ago	[ ]

Common mistakes

Writing a diary of the whole week instead of reflecting on one experience.
Long description, one line of analysis.
Analysis without any concept, model or outside view: only "I felt" and "I think".
Action plans with no date or measure ("be more confident").
Only writing about failures, or only about successes.
Self-ratings that never meet outside evidence such as feedback or the participation log.
Letting an AI tool write the reflection; it removes the thinking that produces the learning, and graded journals usually require your own words.

Self-test

Name the four modes of Kolb's cycle in order.
Distinguish reflection-in-action from reflection-on-action, with an MBA example of each.
Name the six steps of Gibbs' reflective cycle.
Which two Gibbs steps map to Kolb's abstract conceptualisation in this template?
What conditions does goal-setting research attach to the benefit of specific, difficult goals?
In the example chart, by how much did the mean rating for G2 change between the first and second four weeks?

Sources and further reading

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Prentice Hall.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books.
Gibbs, G. (1988). Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. Further Education Unit, Oxford Polytechnic.
Locke, E. A., and Latham, G. P. (2002). Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: a 35-year odyssey. American Psychologist, 57(9), 705-717.
Further reading (by name only): Boud, Keogh and Walker (eds), Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning (1985); Moon, A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning (2004).

Answer key

Concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, active experimentation.
Reflection-in-action happens during the situation (changing your argument mid cold call when a classmate's number undercuts it); reflection-on-action happens afterwards (the weekly journal entry about that cold call).
Description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, action plan.
Analysis and conclusion.
Commitment to the goal and feedback on progress (the review also treats task complexity as a moderator, and goal importance and self-efficacy as drivers of commitment).
From 1.75 to 3.5, an increase of 1.75 points.

Revision history

Version	Date	Author	Change
1.0	YYYY-MM-DD	[Name]	Goals set, first entry
[1.1]	YYYY-MM-DD	[Name]	[Month 1 synthesis, goal G3 replaced]

Standard and licence note

Based on the experiential learning cycle (Kolb 1984), the reflective practitioner (Schön 1983), the reflective cycle (Gibbs 1988) and goal-setting research (Locke and Latham 2002), summarised in original wording; the prompts are original. This template is not affiliated with or endorsed by any business school or publisher. If the journal is assessed, check your course's current instructions on format, privacy and AI use. All people, organisations and ratings in the examples are fictional. Template licence: MIT.

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