Community Conversations: Library Resources

Kirpalani, N. (2017). Developing self-reflective practices to improve teaching effectiveness. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 17(8), 73-80.
Main Idea: How educator reflection can improve teaching efficacy.

This article turns the tables on self-reflection and explores the benefits of self-reflective practices for educators. Three areas of reflection-- content reflection, process reflection, and premise reflection-- are presented, and the benefits of taking time out to consider each is discussed.

Xie, Y., Ke, F., & Sharma, P. (2008). The effect of peer feedback for blogging on college students' reflective learning processes. Internet and Higher Education, 11(1), 18-25.
Main Idea: Unique ideas for reflection assignments.

This paper discusses the results of a study designed to examine the reflective thinking skills of college students, as affected by peer feedback and blogging. Students were asked to keep weekly reflection journals, and two entries were sampled at the start and end of the semester per student. The study found that while students’ ability to think reflexively improved over the course of the semester, peer feedback negatively affected how deeply students were willing to reflect.

Harring, K., & Luo, T. (2016). Eportfolios: Supporting reflection and deep learning in high-impact practices. Peer Review, 18(3), 9-12.
Main Idea: Unique ideas for reflection assignments.

A small liberal arts college implemented an eportfolio initiative for students to keep an ongoing series of entries as a response to writing prompts. Ultimately, the prompts asked students to reflect on the wider implications (career, future, etc.) of class concepts, why specific concepts are important to them, what follow-up questions a student might have, and the like. While implementing such an initiative at MSOE is not viable, this article puts forth many good ideas for potential one-off student reflection topics.

Levett-Jones, T. (2007). Facilitating reflective practice and self-assessment of competence through the use of narratives. Nurse Education in Practice, 7(2), 112-9.
Main Idea: The importance and benefits of encouraging students to reflect on course materials.

This paper comes from the nursing education perspective, and it discusses reflective practice as a central skill necessary for nursing students’ professional development. It recommends the use of narrative reflection-- asking students to reflect on specific situations encountered their clinical practice-- to cultivate a deeper understanding of topics by connecting them to a practical situation that the student experienced firsthand.

Quinton, S., & Smallbone, T. (2010). Feeding forward: using feedback to promote student reflection and learning - a teaching model. Innovations in Education & Teaching International, 47(1), 125–135.
Main idea: How to incorporate student reflection into an online course and the importance of doing so.

This article underlines the importance of reflection as an engagement tool for students that helps to solidify their long-term understanding of the course material. The authors of this article also present a teaching model which incorporates reflection tools and their successes using these tools to broaden students’ understanding.

Bouldin, A. S. (2017). Reflection Is Not Reflexive. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 81(9), 7–9.
Main Idea: Challenges with assigning reflection assignments and how to overcome them.

This short article discusses the challenges faced by educators when encouraging students to reflect on the class material. It asks some interesting questions and looks at how students often see reflection assignments as high-effort, low-reward undertakings. However, the article acknowledges that true reflection is one of the most effective ways to cultivate understanding of class materials.

Coulson, D., & Harvey, M. (2013). Scaffolding student reflection for experience-based learning: a framework. Teaching in Higher Education, 18(4), 401–413.
Main Idea: How to incorporate student reflection into classes.

The use of the scaffolding teaching method (progressively nudging students towards independent problem solving and understanding) works especially well when partnered with assignments that require student reflection. In this article, the authors discuss a framework that they have developed, using this partnership to enhance experience-based learning.

Dressler, J. A., Ryder, B. A., Connolly, M., Blais, M. D., Miner, T. J., & Harrington, D. T. (2018). “Tweet”-format writing is an effective tool for medical student reflection. Journal of Surgical Education, 75(5), 1206-1210
Main Idea: Unique idea for reflection assignments.

This original report comes from the field of medical education. It presents a unique style of writing assignment which encourages students to reflect on the class material in a concise and novel way. The “tweet”-format assignment was created to appeal to the current generation of students who may be more comfortable interacting with course materials using the limited-character format of popular social media platform, Twitter.

Silverstein, D. (2009, June), Improving Student Learning By Encouraging Reflection Through Class Wikis Paper presented at 2009 Annual Conference & Exposition, Austin, Texas.
Main Idea: Unique idea for reflection assignments.

Chemical engineering students were encouraged to contribute to the upkeep of a small group wiki page for the current textbook chapter by adding what they thought were the most important topics and items. Assignments of this nature assist in learning because they require the students to process the information, evaluate the information, and then restate the information.