Developing reflective practice
Had a conversation today about reflective practice and blogging. As stream leader of the Engineering Enterprise Excellence (EEE) MSc programme I have encouraged the use of blogs as a tool that assists development of reflective practice. One of the key aims of this programme is for the students to achieve deep learning, and reflection is an essential element of this learning process. Why use a blog for this? Why is a blog so much better than a diary? The blog can be used like a diary because you can create private entries. However, the power of this medium occurs when we choose to make our entries public. By making our reflective thoughts public, we engage the social aspects of learning - of inviting others to comment on our thoughts, helping us to build on our ideas and enabling us to become aware of and understand other views. This provides us with a deeper learning experience and with practice this reflective thinking will become ever more natural.
I recognise that some people are nervous about making their thoughts public. It is very easy to restrict access to your blog to a circle of friends or colleagues in whom you can confide your thoughts. As you develop confidence in the positive nature of the bogging community, you will widen the circle and thus expand the opportunities for development of ideas. Your blog will become a learning log that will enable you to track the development of your thinking during your study year.
For the current EEE module I have incentivised the use of blogs by allocating marks for the number and quality of reflective entries. My hope is that some students will continue to use blogs when the module and assignment is over. Perhaps next year I should use this approach from the beginning of the course to increase the probability that EEE students become lifelong reflective practitioners.
Paul Roberts
22 Mar 2007 22:54
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Tags: Education Eee;
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Hi, Paul,
After reading one of the oldest Chinese philosophy of learning, and some journals of knowledge management, I gradually realized that the full learning process is from the understanding of the knowledge to the application of the knowledge. It is a long-term process which required a lot of reflections in both intellectual level and practical level. I strongly support your suggestion of reflective learning, because the full process of learning requires so many reflections. In my opinion, the blogging is really a starting point or an effective approach for the reflective learning. Moreover, in the life long journey of learning, there are many other reflective approaches should also be considered. All in all, as a student I should understand the importance of reflection as a necessary activity of the learning process. This is just some small reflections of your reflections on the reflective learning.
From Ray
27 Mar 2007, 19:38
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