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Reflective Journaling and Assessment

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Abstract

The instructional strategies and assessment practices available both in and outside of the classroom to enhance student self-awareness, interest and learning through reflective journaling are discussed. Reflective journaling is a pedagogical strategy to effectively enhance self-awareness, student interest and learning. A technique, which actually assess the student's integration of their reflective journaling responses on the content area exams is quite effective. In addition to enhancing student self-awareness and interest in the course, the 'final-reflection' papers which are the feedbacks, in introductory courses can also contribute to student growth and development in the academic programs.

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... Learning is accomplished through reflection about experiences (Boyd and Fales, 1983) but self-assessment must be learned. CCD journaling assignments, coupled with a programme's network facilitating mechanisms, would provide a milieu in which to do so (Hampton and Morrow, 2003). CCD also would couple sense making with learning (Schwandt, 2005) through both the journaling and the case development processes, but it is collaborative and participative sense making, not individual sense making. ...
... By creating an iterative feedback environment that involves both faculty and peers in the network, students can evaluate their performance in context. The ability to evaluate others' work products and receive feedback from their peers gives students direct input into the grading process (Hampton and Morrow, 2003). The self-efficacy engendered through this type of evaluation can mitigate the sense that grades are distributed by third parties without any contextualisation relevant to the student's experience. ...
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... Journals are used as a means to foster selflearning and encourage the development of the reflective practitioner (Lyons, 1999). The idea of reflective journaling as a pedagogical strategy to effectively enhance self-awareness was introduced by Hampton and Morrow (2003) when teaching civil engineering in a United States military academy, integrating its use throughout their courses. ...
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... Students were encouraged to bring examples from their personal experience or their other coursework that would be relevant to discussions as a way to illustrate concepts across a range of environmental topics and challenges. Reflection and journaling can also be effective at helping students synthesize and draw connections between important concepts and is often used in career counseling (Hampton and Morrow, 2003;McGuire et al., 2012;Woodbridge and Rust O'Beirne, 2017). For that reason, opportunities for individual and collective reflection were intentionally built into course discussions and assignments. ...
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... 24 Hampton and Morrow discussed positive changes regarding student self-awareness, interest, perceptions of learning, and instructor-student relationships as a result of journaling initiatives in undergraduate engineering classes. 25 Counseling faculty are encouraged to consider reflective journals to dialogue with students and model the language and methods of the discipline. 26 Through the use of journals as an educational strategy, occupational therapy students experience transformative learning by increasing their own self-awareness combined with interactive feedback from faculty. ...
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This paper builds on an earlier conference presentation at the West-East Institute, Harvard University in 2019. Following further critical dialogue on mass experimental online learning influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, the now two authors sought to answer the question of how can educators make course evaluation exercises count? The objective was to assess the viability of reflective journaling as an alternative form of course evaluation. Consequently, the authors used a mixed-method approach to, firstly, analyze ordinal data collected from seventy-one (71) postgraduate engineering candidates (89% response rate) on their attitudes towards learning. Secondly, the authors analyzed the textual data on the candidates’ self- and educator-led initiatives to enrich their learning experiences. The findings revealed a paradox—the candidates hope to have gained in-depth knowledge at the end of their courses (topmost-ranked: mean = 4.704 and SD = 0.700) but do not attend most classes with questions in mind that they want to be answered (bottom-ranked: mean = 3.451 and SD = 1.072). Analysis of the textual data showed face-to-face lecture/class attendance and the overall course design as the most common student-led and educator-led approach, respectively. Finally, the authors discuss the practical and theoretical implications considering the burgeoning online education.
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