Welcome to the toolkit!
If you are an instructor looking to facilitate critical reflection in the classroom this toolkit is for you.
Before you move on, you might want to take a second and ask yourself:
- Why am I on this site?
- What/who brought me here?
- What do I want to take away from this site?
- How will I know I have gotten what I needed? Source: Reflection. (2020, November 11). The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved April 20, 2021 from https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection
Whether you are hoping to learn more about the importance of reflection, identify different reflection models and frameworks, locate reflection assignment templates, or begin to better assess student reflections, you will find it in this toolkit!
Sometimes, you have to look back in order to understand the things that lie ahead.
What is reflection?
Reflection is the conscious examination of past experiences in order to examine what was learned.
When done well, reflective practice allows the students the opportunity to think about what they learned through the choices they made, their actions, and their success and failures during the experience.
According to Dewey (1966), “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”
Through active consideration and evaluation of their learning and professional practices, students uncover the meaning of the experience and thereby construct new knowledge. The goal of reflective practice is to inform present and future projects through decisions, actions, attitudes, and the understanding of oneself.
Reflection assignments allow students to express their thoughts and opinions about their learning instead of simply summarizing content and events. Engineering education should provide students with “opportunities for reflection to connect thinking and doing” (Ambrose, 2013) in order to support deeper learning.
Reflecting, or exploring the meaning of experiences and the consequences of the meanings for future action, has always been essential in the development of expertise. Reflection and the promotion of reflective techniques are becoming more important in engineering education because of the expanding need for diverse, adaptive, broad-thinking, and nimble engineering experts who can respond to the ever-increasing challenges that society faces.
Sources:
Dewey, J. (1966). Democracy and education: An introduction to the philosophy of education. The Free Press.
Ambrose, S. A. (2013). Undergraduate engineering curriculum: The ultimate design challenge. The Bridge, 43(2), 16-23
CPREE. (n.d.) What is Reflection? Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE). http://cpree.uw.edu/what-is-reflection/
Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) – website with resources on what reflection is, links to reflection field guides from American universities, and conference papers on reflection in Engineering.
Why assign reflections
Engineering students are provided with many opportunities for rich experiences to learn by doing through hands-on, minds-on activities that include labs, collaborative building and design projects
These experiential learning pedagogies have proven to be very successful in inviting students to apply their content knowledge and unique skillset in authentic ways. However, Ambrose (2013, p.1) points out that, “…yes, students learn by doing, but only when they have time to reflect- the two go hand in hand. Why, then, don’t engineering curricula provide constant structured opportunities and time to ensure continual reflection takes place?”
Students in engineering reflect informally quite often. They revise their design project after receiving feedback from their end-user. They will rework their lab experiment when the results are not what they expect. However, in the absence of formal reflection, students can misinterpret their experiences and act on these misinterpretations (Turns et al., 2014). This misinterpretation often impairs their learning later in the curriculum. Rather than leaping from one experience to the next, reflection asks students to pause to grapple with the complexities and ambiguities of an authentic experience.
Through intentional, structured reflection, students reconcile theory and practice and develop a plan for implementing new knowledge into their next experience. The process of reflection supports students to make sense of an experience as they develop the metacognitive skills required for deeper, life-long learning (Ash & Clayton, 2009). Through structured, well-designed reflection assignments, students develop important employability skills like “problem-solving, higher order reasoning, integrative thinking, goal clarification openness to new ideas, ability to adopt new perspectives and systemic thinking (Ash & Clayton, 2009, p.27). Reflection and the promotion of reflective techniques are becoming more important in engineering education because of the expanding need for diverse, adaptive, broad-thinking, and nimble engineering experts who can respond to the ever-increasing challenges that society faces. Through the process of structured reflection, students build well-articulated skills and competencies that demonstrate their development into professional Engineers.
We had the experience but missed the meaning.
Ambrose, S. A. (2013). Undergraduate engineering curriculum: The ultimate design challenge. The Bridge, 43(2), 16-23
Turns, J. A., Sattler, B., Yasuhara, K., Borgford-Parnell, J. L., & Atman, C. J. (2014). Integrating reflection into engineering education. [Paper Presentation]. 121st ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Indianapolis. https://depts.washington.edu/cpreeuw/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Integrating-Reflection-ASEE-2014.pdf
Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48.
Well-crafted reflection assignments are aligned to one or more intended learning outcomes within your course. This way, the learning outcomes, the experience, and the reflection assignment will be constructively aligned, and students will not feel as though the reflection assignment is an unrelated task. Reflection assignments that are designed around clearly stated learning outcomes lead to assessment. Formal reflection assignments are an effective way to measure if students meet the course’s intended learning outcomes. “The learning objectives thus become both the road map that guides the design of the reflection activities and the basis for determining whether the intended destination has been reached and adequately expressed in the products of reflection” (Ash and Clayton, 2009). By aligning the reflection with the course learning outcomes, students will not feel as though the assignment is separate or in addition to their already heavy Engineering course load. We suggest that reflections be part of the formal assessment strategy and integrated into the course curriculum. In the case of students that are new to reflection, we suggest the first assignments be small in weighting such that students can receive feedback on their submissions and recognize what is expected of them. As students become more experienced in effective reflection, they will be better equipped for assignments that are heavier in weight.
Through critical reflection, students examine and articulate their learning through an experience. Critical reflections are not a simple retelling of what happened, a summary of events, or an update on their project. The ability to reflect upon an experience to discover what was learned is often a new skill that must be developed and scaffolded. Students need substantial feedback and scaffolding to be successful when they are new to this kind of expression. Share with students that you are not looking for the “right” answer here but, rather, for what the learning means to them. Through timely feedback, instructors can address student misconceptions about both the reflection assignment and their analysis of the experience and let students know when they are on the right track. To best focus student attention on their learning and provide timely and constructive feedback, rubrics are strongly recommended.
Ash, S. L., & Clayton, P. H. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education, 1(1), 25-48.
Thomas, L. D., Orand, M., Shroyer, K. E., Turns, J. A., Atman, C. Tips & Tricks for Successful Implementation of Reflective Activities in Engineering Education. [Paper Presentation]. 2016 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, New Orleans. https://www.asee.org/public/conferences/64/papers/17117/view
For more information on how to write well-defined learning outcomes, please reach out to the MacPherson Institute (mi@mcmaster.ca) or visit some of the following websites.
Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario: https://heqco.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/heqco.LOAhandbook_Eng_2015.pdf
University of Waterloo Centre for Teaching Excellence: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-teaching-excellence/teaching-resources/teaching-tips/planning-courses/course-design/writing-learning-outcomes
University of Toronto Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation: https://teaching.utoronto.ca/teaching-support/course-design/developing-learning-outcomes/characteristics-of-good-learning-outcomes/
If you are planning to assign reflection in your course, the chances are that you are looking to assess these reflections and give them a grade. Reflection activities are not always graded, but when they are, it can be helpful to use a rubric. Before you choose a rubric, it is important to think about what type of reflection activity you have asked your students to do and what you want them to get out of the activity.
Rubrics
Below you will find examples of rubrics that may help you when assessing student reflections. Remember that you can always modify a rubric to fit your specific class context.
The following rubric is from Brock University’s Experiential Education Guidebook.
The University of Edinburgh also provides two useful rubrics referred to as Analytical Rubrics.
Example 1 – Standard Rubric:
Example 2 – Different Criteria Rubric
Assessing reflection without a rubric:
Not everyone wants to use a rubric when grading reflection activities. For examples of how to grade reflections holistically, check out the University of Edinburgh’s website on assessing reflections. The University of Edinburgh’s table comes from Jennifer A. Moon’s book A Handbook of Reflective and Experiential Learning. This is a highly recommended source, and you can access the book through the McMaster website.