Reflection transforms experience into learning (Kolb 2014). Classroom activities reflective of real-world encounters, whether professional or societal, provide the experience. Meaningful reflection on this experience then moves students towards deepening and consolidating their learning and understandings. For a more detailed discussion of the experiential learning cycle see the ATI’s Experiential Learning Resource.
The case studies highlighted throughout this toolkit featured reflective elements either during the learning activity or after the activity. While most designs invited students to think back and reflect on action, some also purposefully interrupted students during the activity and prompted reflection on action (Schön, 1983). These opportunities for reflection deepened students’ learning as they worked through the activity, particularly by sharing their reflective insights with their peers during group work and co-constructing and extending understandings in interactive and relational ways. Some designs, specifically, focused on metacognitive learning by prompting students to reflect on how they learned.
Reflection matrix
Reflection must be intentionally designed to maximise its transformative potential (Ash and Clayton, 2009). The reflection matrix draws on the capabilities that the activity designs promoted and offer some general pointers for implementing an intentional reflective task in your next experiential design. This matrix takes inspiration from Ash and Clayton’s approach to structured critical reflection (2009). Their approach is anchored in three interconnected elements: 1) identifying intended learning outcomes; 2) aligning reflective tasks with the identified outcomes; and 3) integrating evaluation through both formative and summative assessment. While the latter element is not captured in the matrix, a few of the case studies provide insight into the benefits of this type of integration in shoring up alignment and offering students opportunities to receive feedback and improve.
The matrix starts with capabilities as intended learning outcomes, which are then expressed in possible cognitive actions in alignment with the revised Bloom’s taxonomy (Anderson and Krathwohl, 2001). These first two steps can help you formulate your objectives for the activity design before choosing the reflective focus, timing and specific prompts. The last column offers an example from one of the case studies.
Reflective focus, in the matrix, can take critical, metacognitive, evaluative or analytical focus. While these may overlap in a context of specific activity, analytical reflection examines relationships, evaluative makes evidence-informed judgements, metacognitive monitors and evaluates students’ own thinking and learning, and critical reflection can either focus on examining assumptions (Brookfield, 1995) or assessing knowledge or practice using evidence (Ash and Clayton, 2009).
The timing of reflection is indicated as before, during and after action. While the during and after align with Donald Schön’s reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action, the before (reflection that precedes action) can help activate prior knowledge to plan and set goals for the activity ahead (Zimmerman, 2002).
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Cognitive actions Reflective focus Timing Reflective prompts Apply, adapt, integrate synthesise, generalise Metacognitive, evaluative Before and after action What knowledge from a previous context could inform this situation/task? What theory can you draw on to explain this? Learning social theory through everyday conversations – in this design students explain sociological theory or concept through real-world, everyday situation by writing a dialogue about it. Students reflect on how they drew on theory by reading their dialogue out loud.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Negotiate, synthesise, create, design, evaluate, refine Critical, metacognitive During and after action How did different perspectives shape our shared understanding or output? What is my role in this collaboration? Follow the guide! – in this design students work in small groups to curate a virtual exhibition; at the end of the project they reflect individually on their role in the collaboration.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Interpret, analyse, contextualise, communicate Critical, metacognitive Before, during and after action How did your language or cultural assumptions influence your interpretation? How might a different person/different audience interpret it? Stepping into the francophone cities – in this design, students engaged in the immersive video experiences of francophone cities; they reflect on their knowledge of the cities before and after engaging with the videos, with the follow-up reflection focused on how their perceptions of the cities changed and evolved after engaging with the videos.
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Capability Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Digital literacy and sensibility Analyse, evaluate, critique, design Critical, evaluative Before, during and after action Why did you choose this digital tool or approach? What are its limitations, risks and alternatives? How did this tool support or facilitate your learning?
Building a chatbot to learn about and with AI – in this design, students build their own chatbot, learning how to prompt it and optimise it as an educational resource; students reflected at multiple stages of the activity on their progress and to iterate their prompts. Most significantly, students reflected oat the end of the overall educational value of their chatbot.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Interpret, analyse, evaluate Critical, analytical During and after action Whose perspective have you prioritised or overlooked? How would your interpretation change if you considered a different perspective? Diving into global politics – in this design students participate in the UN Security Council simulation; they reflect during and after the simulation. The reflective pause in middle of the simulation invites students to consider the crisis negotiations from an alternative member state to the one they role-play, while at the end Diving into global politics – in this design students participate in the UN Security Council simulation; they reflect during and after the simulation. The reflective pause in middle of the simulation invites students to consider the crisis negotiations from an alternative member state to the one they role-play, while at the end students reflect on what they learned about the mechanics of the UN.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Investigate, analyse, evaluate, synthesise, plan Metacognitive, evaluative Before, during and after action What skills did you bring to this task? How have your research assumptions or decisions changed in response to the evidence and learning about alternative interpretations? Objects as lasting experiences: in this object-based learning activity, students are asked to reflect on how they formed their own interpretations of objects and what they learned from being exposed to other students’ investigations of the same objects.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Analyse, monitor, plan evaluate, adapt Metacognitive Before, during and after action Which learning strategy worked best for you and why? What will you adjust next time? Building a chatbot to learn about and with AI – in this design, students build their own chatbot, learning how to prompt it and optimise it as an educational resource. The iterative design means that students are reflecting on their actions and approaches regularly to iterate and improve their prompts.
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Cognitive actions Reflective foucus Timing Reflective prompts Coordinate, negotiate, evaluate, adapt, plan Metacognitive, evaluate During and after action What is your role in the team? How did your actions affect the team’s progress? How can a future collaboration be improved, and what actions can you take towards that? Learning media writing through simulated play – in this design, students engage in a sequence of in-class simulations of authentic writing contexts in the media industry. While students worked in groups in these tasks, the reflections prompted evaluative thinking to assess their own writing. Reflections conducted in groups gave students opportunities to negotiate their evaluations and learn from each other.
References
Ash, S., & Clayton, P. (2009). Generating, deepening, and documenting learning: The power of critical reflection in applied learning. Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education 1(Fall), 25-48.
Brookfield, S. D. (1995). Becoming a critically reflective teacher. Jossey-Bass.
Kolb, D. A. (2014). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Pearson Education.
Krathwohl, D. R. (2002). A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy: An Overview. Theory into Practice, 41(4), 212–218.
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.