Reflective Writing

Reflective Writing - Guidance Notes for Students
Pete Watton; Jane Collings; Jenny Moon
April 2001

This pack looks mainly at reflective writing for work-based/experience modules but can be applied across the board. Essentially it is an informative paper with some background theory on reflection and a few exercises with case studies. Overall the pack seems quite useful and manages to provide a good overview of reflection in a way that most students are able to understand. It makes use of material that students may relate to, such as a reference to reflection in Harry Potter:

‘Harry stared at the stone basin. The contents had returned to their original, silvery white state, swirling and rippling beneath his gaze.

“ What is it?” Harry asked shakily.

“This? It is called a Pensieve,” said Dumbledore. “ I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind.”

“Err,” said Harry who couldn’t truthfully say that he had ever felt anything of the sort.

“At these times” said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, “ I use the Penseive. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into a basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form.’ ( Rowling 2000)

Guidance on reflection

A great informative guidance sheet for students at Hull University (Chris Pinder) on reflection. Although it's geared towards a paper based portfolio the underlying principles are still the same. This may prove useful when developing our own guidance. It's simple and concise:

http://www.hull.ac.uk/studyadvice/LearningResources/StudyGuidesPDFs/reflectlr.pdf

Teaching & Learning

After my the second IP session with Glenn's group I had time to discuss portfolios with Glenn. We had an interesting discussion about the aim of ePoftfolios and difficulties I may encounter with teaching and learning aspect of reflection. The conversation addressed the priority of teaching and learning within a research led institution, and whether the current climate of economic uncertainty and reduction of research funding would lead to trend towards a focus teaching and learning.

One of interesting points made was that a lot academics have no formal teaching qualifications. This raises the question of formal teaching qualifications/training are required in order to teach a subject in HE; one could argue that being a specialist in a field is sufficient to teach it. Should academics be informed about teaching practises? Is the role of the academic in HE to teach or to deliver information and support the learning process?

I need to look at ways in reflective learning can be taught or supported. Essentially, this is what is required for ePortfolio use.

Trial run - flexibility of webfolios.

I have contacted Prem Kumar and Glenn regarding a trial run of PebblePad ePortfolio with the a group of IP students.

As mentioned in the IP session 2 post below the students generally produce low tech, but very effective presentations. I believe changing this element of the IP sessions would be counterproductive and students would simply get bogged down with 'having' to use technology for technology's sake.

I propose a solution where the students supplement their IP sessions by recording their learning, just as they do with the paper based portfolio forms handed out at the session, but electronically. The aim of this would be to create a record of all IP case studies over the duration of the course.

The students will be using the webfolio tool in PebblePad to record their learning and populate it over the year. The ability of being able to merge/add one webfolio into another means that students can create individual webfolios for each year specifically for IP and then merge them into one webfolio covering all years. In addition to this students can create an overall webfolio for the MBChB course and populate with the IP webfolio, the SSA webfolio as well as other webfolios created for other modules/subjects on the course.

The webfolio can then be exported into a HTML format at the end of the course for the student to keep for future reference. There may also be a opportunity for the Medical school to keep/archive a copy of each students work for future reference, audits etc.

The ability to embed one webfolio into another brings the opportunity to create a felxible eportfolio. As stated above, webfolios can be created for each module/subject on a yearly basis. These yearly webfolios can then be either drawn together as an overall webfolio for the module over the duration of the course, or be compiled to give an view of learning during an academic year for whole course, i.e. embedding webfolios from each module/subject for a particular year into MBChB 1 for example. As well as this, students would be able to create a custom eportfolio for a specific purpose; for example, bringing together webfolios from different years and modules to show a particular learning path/story.

Each of the boxes in the simple diagram below represents a webfolio. The idea is that students pull together specific webfolios into any particular sequence they require; like building with Lego bricks, you decide what parts you need for any particular model.

IP Session 2nd Year

Attended second year IP session with Glenn Matthews. This particular group seemed to be quite active and engaged in the learning process being able to independently assign each other tasks, brainstorm around a new case study and formulate mindmaps from the brainstorm. Presentations were innovitive, well thought out and it was clear that learning was taking place as the information was disseminated back the rest of the group and feedback received.

One noticible point was the lack of technology used during presentations. OHP acetates were used and had been hand written which would possibly indicate either a lack of presentation/powerpoint skills or last minute preparation. The room had only an OHP, whiteboard and OHP screen for students to use to present. This may need to be address when looking at the use of ePortfolios to support IP. After the session Glenn had suggested that this was a particularly lively group and did not need to interfere with the session as the students were more than capable of directing their own learning. We met with another member of staff who had also just given an IP session in which she found the students needed a fair amount of support. It may be beneficial to sit in on one of these sessions to gain a better veiw of the learning processes and how an ePortfolio tool may benefit those students that experience difficulty with the case studies.

Overall the session was a positive experience and I have been invited back to the follow-on session on 3rd March, as well as attending a first year IP session on 26th Feb.