Incorporating Reflection on Learning into the Undergraduate Curriculum

Incorporating Reflection on Learning into the

Undergraduate Curriculum

Roger McDermottSchool of Computing

Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen

Professional Competencies Seminar, April 8th 2011Univ. Uppsala, Sweden

Plan

• Motivation• Implementation• Activities• Reflection


IdeasSelf-

Regulated Learning

Reflection/ Critical Analysis

Learning Journals/

Blogs

FeedbackProcesses

Workplace Learning

Boekarts, Nicol, ... Self-observation,Self-judgement,Self-reaction

Eraut, Jackson, ...

Dweck, Nicol, ...


Communities of Practice

Schon, ...

Wenger, ...

Develop-mental Models

Piaget, Dreyfus, Vygotsky, ...

Boud, Robertson, ...

Tacit Knowledge

Employability

Polanyi, ...

Knight, Yorke,...

A Few Concepts...Some Terms

– Employability– Workplace Learning– Skill Acquisition– Feedback

• What we did...


Employability• A set of achievements, understanding and personal

attributes that make individuals more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations.

(Knight & Yorke, 2002).

• Employability is not just about getting a job. • Conversely, just because a student is on a vocational

course does not mean that somehow employability is automatic.


Employability• Employability is more than about developing

attributes, techniques or experience just to enable a student to get a job, or to progress within a current career.

• It is about learning – the emphasis is less on “employ” part and more on the “ability”.

• In essence, the emphasis is on developing critical, reflective abilities, with a view to empowering and enhancing the learner. Employment is a by-product of this enabling process (Knight & Yorke, 2002).


Workplace Learning

“A key feature of being a newcomer is that of not knowing what is going on around you, or what precisely is expected of you”

M. Eraut, (2009), How Professionals Learn through Work

• But there are differences...Professional Competencies Seminar, April 8th 2011Univ. Uppsala, Sweden

Lessons from Workplace LearningRelating the workplace to university teaching:• Embedding Professional skills/competencies in UG/PG

curricula• Emphasising curricular relevance:

– placements,– internships, – cultivation of a “workplace ethos”.

• Main Conceptual Input: Developing capabilities, decision-making, and the role of tacit knowledge in a (social) learning context


Progression in the WorkplaceRequirements for progression:• Couched in vague terminology. • Apprenticeship or mentoring model.

– Improvements in personal efficiency,• doing things better,

– Demonstrating multiple approaches to problems,• doing things differently,

– Expanding the areas of personal competence• doing different things.


Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition

1. Novice– Rigid adherence to taught rules or plans

2. Advanced Beginner– All attributes given equal weight: lack of prioritisation

3. Competence– Formation of standard, routine procedures

4. Proficiency– Holistic appreciation of problems– Perceives deviations from norms

5. Expertise– Intuitive grasp based on deep, tacit understanding– Analytic approaches only used in atypical circumstances

Dreyfus, H. L. and Dreyfus, S.E., (1986)


Role of Tacit KnowledgeTacit Knowledge occurs in:• Situational/Contextual Understanding

– used in all five stages– based largely on experience

• Intuitive Decision-Making– involves pattern recognition and rapid responses to

developing situations• Development of Routine Procedures

– through to competence stage– reduces cognitive load


Observations• First Year students usually at the Novice or Advanced

Beginner level; Lecturers are (usually) at expert level • At the early stages,

– reasoning is schema-driven rather than procedural– students instinctively relate all problems to

previous examples, regardless of the changed context or novel features of the situation.

• At the final stage, – decision-making processes are implicit, – analytic methods only explicitly used:

in novel situations, when problems occur, or when trying to justify conclusions.


FeedbackFeedback should:1. facilitate the development of self assessment (reflection) in

learning,2. encourage teacher and peer dialogue around learning,3. help clarify what good performance is (goals, criteria, expected

standards),4. provide opportunities to close the gap between current and

desired performance,5. deliver high quality information to students about their learning,6. encourages positive motivational beliefs and self-esteem,7. provide information to teachers that can be used to help shape

the teaching.

David Nicol et al, SENLEF 2004; REAP 2008


Why Use Blogs?Pedagogic Reasons• Allows students to express their own learning

narrative: – partial, contingent, developing, – locally coherent,– interacts with feedback and commentary from

colleagues and tutors. • Integrates personal reflective activity with

(inherently) social character of blogging,• Enhances both autonomous and collaborative

learning(?)


Why Did We Use Blogs?• Encourage development of critical and analytical

skills via reflection on student educational experiences. – Articulation and documentation of personally

significant insights into the learning process over an extended period of time.

– Key graduate attribute: • enhancement of life-long learning skills • increased employability, • important element of an e-portfolio-based PDP

system.


Why Did We Use Blogs?Operational Reasons• Provide an accessible communication forum

– Student-student, student-lecturer, (lecturer-student)

– Less formal than mechanisms usually found in the classroom.

• Promote the creation of social networks that support learning


Implementing the EnvironmentImplementation Issues• Hosting

– Internal/External• Type of Implementation: Minimalist/Extensive• Scale of Roll-out: Whole cohort/subset• Nature of Student Contribution

– Voluntary/Compulsory– Formal/Informal– Assessed/Non-assessed– Anonymity– Public/Private posts


Problematic Issues

• Reflective activities extremely difficult for students– unless provided with appropriate scaffolding

• Significant tension exists between:– Formal documentation of achievement – Use of the technology as an immediate and relaxed

communication forum. – The issue of Genre


Activities• Work embedded in 15-credit, two-semester

Collaborative and Professional Skills module.• Two kinds of task formed the essential student

activity of this module:First Type: – Each student required to keep an individual blog

and post a minimum of 200 words on each technical module per week.

– Also a required to make a substantive comment on two other blog posts each week.


Activities• Default template for reflective comments provided

some basic scaffolding for these exercises: – Identify the major learning objectives covered that

week,– Detail new information the student had

assimilated, – Comment on any learning strategies they had

adopted, and – Describe affective reactions to the classes had they

experienced.• Class-time was set aside for completion.


Typical Indicators of Critical Skills

Example: • Have you:

demonstrated appropriate understanding of subject? presented evidence of research into the topic? made a critical evaluation of the source material? shown evidence of appropriate selection of material? given evidence of questioning the assumptions underlying

the argument made by the author? provided suitable evidence for any points you have made? ensured that the references you use enhance the arguments

that you are making (as opposed to merely padding out the text)?


A Problem of GenreTwo stage solution:• Student selection of material submitted for

assessment.• Reflection as process.

• Example of Good Reflection but Poor Record of Achievement (see next slide)


ExampleThis week we did the maths test, the first paper was easy and i left the room after 25 minutes, the second one was a lot harder as you had to write down on paper how you worked everything out and unfortunately im a very slow writer. We got our results and if i had checked my first paper i would of realise i made a few stupid errors now i know next time dont leave before you check your work i did okay on this paper, then stupidly i got this idea in my head i had done all the first paper wrong and when i faced the second test i lost it completely believing i was going to fail i started to check my work and ran out of time plus i was just looking at the questions and my mind was blank what an idiot but never mind after all that i managed a B which i thought was not too bad considering apart from doing intermediate maths last year at college i havent done any maths for 25 years, i learned a bit from this assessment as in not to panic or try not too and just have a little more confidence in myself. I also am aiming to get an A next test well i will try a lot harder anyways as the information was inside my head as after we got the results and papers back i thought oh dear i knew all those questions what to do.


Other ActivitiesSecond kind of activity:• More structured opportunities to enhance ‘graduate

attributes’. – Critical thinking, – Access, evaluate and synthesise information, – Communicate effectively and to work successfully

both independently and in teams, – Demonstrate leadership, professional behaviour

and ethical practices.


Example: Academic Writing Task

Extended collaborative Book Review given to around 80 students in a first year of a computing degree.

The cohort was divided into 13 groups. The organisation of each group was left to the group members.

Each person in the group was asked to read the popular science book, ‘Bad Science’ by Ben Goldacre.


Structure of the Book Review• Each group was asked to produce

a critical 1500 word overview of the book, a full chapter-by-chapter review (1000 words each). This was posted on a group wiki which could only be

accessed by other members of the group.• Each member was asked to give constructive criticism of

work done by other members of the group using a private forum.

• Group members were then given the opportunity to rewrite or amend the review based on this feedback.


Structure of the Book Review• All group submissions were then made public (i.e. visible to

all groups).• Each group was asked (collectively) to make a critical

analysis of the submissions of two other groups, and give appropriate, constructive comments on these.

• Finally, students were asked to draw up a set of assessment criteria on which they would wish their submission to be marked.


Structure of the Book Review• They were also asked to complete self- and peer-

assessment forms. • Each student was required to:

analyse and assess the contribution made by other members of the group,

critically assess their own contribution to the group effort,

reflect on the degree to which this has been a successful learning task.


Framework for Assessing Reflectivity • Descriptive writing

Non-reflective• Descriptive reflection

Based on personal opinion• Dialogic reflection

Internal dialogue to explore possible reasons. • Critical reflection

Sophisticated reflection taking into account broader contexts.

(Hatton & Smith, 1995)

Assessing Reflection


Assessing ReflectionAlternatively...Stages of Learning • Noticing: Basic seeing and memorising.• Making sense: Coherent reproduction but not

related to previous learning.• Making meaning: Integrated and well-linked ideas.• Working with meaning: Relating new material with

previous learning.• Transformative learning: Strong restructuring of

ideas and ability to evaluate the process of learning.(Moon, 1999)


Observations(Despite significant scaffolding), student reflection was

(often) found:• to lack appropriate syntactic/grammatical structure,• to lack any kind of critical structure,• to be far too informal.


The Student Blogging Environment

The Old System based on Drupal

The Student Blogging EnvironmentThe Old System based on Drupal

The New System: RGU MyPortfolio


Features• ePortfolio System• Multiple Views• User can upload multimedia material

– Blog can be textual, audio or video– “Facebook” Wall Features

But...• Blogs not automatically aggregated• Loss of spontaneity


The New System: RGU MyPortfolio

Incorporating Reflection on Learning into the Undergraduate Curriculum

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