Putting the “You” in Education: Using Self-reflections for Learning

By Jeff Gandell , Dawson College

At a Glance

Discipline

Languages and Literature

Instructional Level

College & CEGEP

Tasks in Workflow

Social Plane(s)

Individual

Type of Tasks

Writing

Technical Details

Useful Technologies

Computers

Time

Single class period (< 90 mins)

Instructional Purpose

Consolidation & metacognition

Overview

This activity is completed individually by students outside of class, and is set up as a confidential interaction between students and the teacher. Indeed, these assessments are sent to the instructor and are not shared with the class.

In this course, the instructor gave five self-assessments at different points in the semester: at the beginning, before the first major assignment, after completion of the first major assignment, before the second major assignment and finally at the end of the course.

For the specific aims and prompts of each of these assignments, please download the “additional materials” folder.

Instructional Objectives

Students will be able to:

Create a goal for themselves in the course
Evaluate if they met their goal
Link how emotion and attitude impact their goal

Workflow & Materials

Activity Workflow

View on CourseFlow

Document

Teacher Instructions 1

Jeff Gandell

Document

Teacher Instructions 2

Jeff Gandell

Contributor's Notes

Benefits

This activity supports students confidence in their work and in themselves;
The self-reflective writing happened to be some of the best writing students made in the course.

Challenges

Fitting the reflections in the right places throughout the semester, determining what is the right amount of assessments for students to gain the most benefit from them without the writing adding too much to their workload.

Tips

When asking to justify their grade (3rd assessment), one paragraph is too short for them to engage in thoughtful writing – one page, double spaced is a better length;
As an instructor it is nice to keep a record of the students’ reflections, at least throughout the course and also after – as it is useful to compare student’s final and initial assessments;
Students’ feedback can be valuable when creating other courses!
It could be useful to try to establish a continuity between the assessments – a journal could be a good way of doing this. It could also be useful to ask students to read back on what they wrote and reflect on that in their final assessment.

Applied Strategies

Reflective Writing

Formal preparatory reflection

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Published: 29/01/2019

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