STUDENTS: REFLECTIVE WRITING - PDF document

STUDENTS: REFLECTIVE WRITING Basic Idea: During a course, at the end of a course, or periodically during their work in a program or in their whole college career, students can pause, pull back from the work of learning itself, and reflect on the learning process and themselves as learners. There are two major benefits from having students do this. First, it enables the students to be more aware of the nature of the learning process and of themselves as learners. It is difficult to be highly eff ective as a self - directed learner, unless you are highly aware of yourself as a learner. Second, this activity gives the teacher a much deeper understanding of what is happening inside the heads of students, when it comes to learning. Key Questions : When you have students do reflective writing, you can structure this however you want. One option is to have students reflect on the following kinds of questions: 1. WHAT Did You Learn in this course ? • Use the Taxonomy of Significant Learning as an organizer: What Foundational Knowledge did you learn? Applications ? Integration ? Etc. 2. HOW did you learn ? • What helped you learn? What didn’t? • What does this tell you about yourself as a learner? 3. What is the VALUE to you, of what you learned ? • Fo r your - Personal life? Social life? Civic life? Professional life? 4. What is your PLAN for FUTURE LEARNING ? • WHAT ELSE do you want to learn? • HOW would you learn THAT? Procedures for doing this : This can be done during a course by periodically asking students to do:  One - minute papers  Learning journals Or, at the end of the course or at the end of certain years in a program or their whole college career, students put together:  Learning portfolios o These consist of two par ts: a reflective essay and a collection of materials (e.g., documents, videos) that support and illustrat e some of the comments in the reflective essay.