Overview
Reflection is an internal dialogue facilitated by writing and creative strategies as a way of expressing, sharing, assessing and developing professional experience. By recognising and taking responsibility for personal and professional identity, values, action and feelings the student undertaking reflection within the constructs of a subject or course is demonstrating a willingness to stay with uncertainty, doubt and questioning in order to engage in spirited enquiry leading to constructive developmental change and professional integrity based on deep understanding. Knowing what to reflect upon is as critical a part of the educative process as the reflection action itself, and is a pedagogical approach that draws in reflective practice and reflexivity - finding strategies to question attitudes, values and limits of personal knowledge. A key area in the development of the professional practitioner is the ability to reflect on practise as part of the process of learning in order to foster continuous professional growth.
Digital reflective journals are part of a pedagogically enriched learning design within online or technology-rich context to support and improve learning experiences. A reflective journal is also especially useful for assessing intended learning outcomes relating to the application of content knowledge, professional judgement and reflection on past decisions and problem solving, with a view to improving them. Reflective thinking also helps students develop a questioning attitude and new perspective; identify areas for change and improvement; respond effectively to challenges; and generalise and apply what they have learned from one situation to other situations.
When it comes to online learning students need time to locate their new learning within framework of their subject or course, and academics as teachers need to support and nurture learners to learn within the same connected and collaborative learning environments as teaching takes place.
Engagement
A digital reflective journal written as a blog provides students with the freedom to engage with content, ideas, discoveries, disappointments, or to simply ponder their learning. Online learning journals should be open and shared spaces, ready for enjoyment as well as providing an opportunity for students to demonstrate functioning knowledge. Part of the engagement is being able to share with others in the cohort, as a participatory learning experience, and to make use of (or learn how to) leverage the affordances of online platforms to better engage with content or leverage available resources to communicate thoughts, discoveries, academic reflections, and multimedia artefacts. Students are also able to demonstrate learning through multimodal additions to the online reflective journal. A reflective journal provides a flexible and responsive way to share the joy of learning!
In Practice
Subject
INF530: Concepts and practices in a digital age
Teaching staff
Judy O’Connell
Motivation
This keystone subject establishes the reflective journal process for use within the subject, but more particularly within the whole course. Students are encouraged to extend themselves by peer responses to their work, and are motivated to explore and embrace the affordances of the online environment to explore their knowledge and share their experiences.
Implementation
CSU Thinkspace provided the ideal vehicle for transforming learning experiences through the use of a reflective journal. Using a CSU username and password students are introduced to a platform that has full flexibility for customisation to reflect personal preferences and provide a touch of motivation. Importantly this is also linked to a range of formative steps supported by the academic in building knowledge and understanding:
- Key topics for reflection
- Peer-to-peer responses
- Teacher feedback
- Literacy and communication
- Celebration of learning achievements
“I found the blogging aspect really helpful to make connections and illustrate my learning to myself and others.”
“HAVING to create a professional blog - helpful for me to clarify and reflect on my learning throughout this subject; and great to be able to share my classmates learning via their blogs too.”
Guide
In looking for opportunities to develop and offer students an opportunity to engage in reflective journalling there are a range of considerations that need to be made:
- Reflective journals provide an opportunity for students to explore, ask questions, respond to readings, summarize key ideas, recognise strengths and weaknesses in their emerging professional understanding and/or practice.
- Understand why you are introducing this strategy. Reflective journals can be a powerful way to build understanding while also providing a responsive mechanism for personalisation of the learning process. However the process is unlikely to be nurtured by introducing too many compulsory posts, tight timelines, or other artificial constraints particularly where there is no teacher presence visible.
- Consider your strategy for engaging interaction between students, in order to build community while also fostering a capacity for personal autonomy and accountability in the process of knowledge networking. Link the reflective journal activity to connected learning experiences or elements of professional practice.
- Make a decision about the contextual setting of your reflective journal activities. Will your cohort be working in Interact2 in a ‘closed’ learner-community space, or will your cohort be working in open, collaborative public spaces engaging with the cohort and beyond with the discipline and/or profession?
- All forms of online learning journals are valuable, but should be designed to best support the required participatory experiences of individual subjects or courses.
- It is best not to ask students to cut and paste blog posts and place them into a discussion forum, or vice versa. However, some students do like to share the depth of their growing ideas and understanding, and how they do this in relation to a reflective journal post is up to them or your class structures. For example, students can provide a link to their post via Twitter and the subject hashtag, or perhaps begin a discussion forum post with “I have just written a post about….” providing a linked URL and commenting on why that post has been important to their emerging understanding relevant to the Discussion forum.
- An online journal post can extend on, or allow deeper personal deliberation of content emerging in the class discussion forum.
- Work may be formative or summative, therefore careful consideration of the learning design of the subject and/or course is essential
Tools
CSU Thinkspace; PebblePad; Interact2 blog; other online platforms
Further Reading
Bull, G., Thompson, A., Searson, M., Garafalo, J., Park, J., Young, C., et al, (2008). Connecting informal and formal learning experiences in the age of participatory media. Contemporary issues in technology and teacher education, 8(2), 100-107.
Cho, M. H., & Kim, B. J. (2013). Students’ self-regulation for interaction with others in online learning environments. The Internet and Higher Education, 17, 69-75.
Garrison, D.R. (2015). Thinking collaboratively: Learning in a community of enquiry. London: Taylor & Francis.