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Themes > Assessment
Reflective Writing
Contributor(s): Dr. Michael
Ying and Dr. Pauline Cho
What is reflective writing?
Reflective writing has been seen as an “authentic” method
of assessment and has been claimed to be a powerful medium for learning
and a means of facilitating reflection-on-action. It enables the documentation
of students’ own experiences, thoughts, questions, ideas and conclusions
that signpost their learning journey. (“Keeping a Reflective Journal”)
Moreover, reflection on that experience helps students make links between
theory and practice, integrate new knowledge with previous knowledge and
develop their own understanding. (“Reflective Writing”)
Advantages of reflective writing
- Help students develop critical or constructive thinking, learn self-evaluation,
and allow their personal and professional growth
- Help students identify weak area/s or uncertainty/ies about any issue/s
in their writing
- Allow students to write about their own thoughts, and attempts at
finding answers to strengthen their understanding and to clarify their
uncertainties
- Encourage students to have a deeper understanding within the applied
learning content
- Motivate/initiate students to learn to be independent and to try
to solve their own problems
- Help students reflect on the teamwork experience in their placements
or classroom
- Help students learn new insights from their clinical/fieldwork experience
- Involve an appreciation of students’ learning process and the
ability to intervene purposefully and positively in the learning experience
- Provide an opportunity for students to think critically about what
they do and why, and to learn and grow as a result of this exercise.
Steps to do it
It can be broken down into three stages (Cho):
Preparation
- Clearly define the objectives that you want students to achieve in
the class
- Prepare guidelines, objectives and assessment criteria, and give
relevant examples to students
- Go through the assessment criteria or guidelines or objectives to
be achieved with students to make sure they all understand
- Go through the list of objectives with examples, and the assessment
criteria (e.g. Solo Taxonomy) to make sure students are clear about
the requirements and how to achieve the stated objectives
- Invite students to give comments or suggestions, and make sure both
teaching staff and students agree on the assessment criteria for their
tasks
Begin
- Encourage or remind students to seek help and clarification from
the subject lecturer or other staff or friends or journals as they prepare
their reflective writing
- Arrange feedback sessions to students on the requirements or expectations
of the reflective exercise
End
- Review and gauge for the level of reflectivity in students’
writing
- Select 1 to 2 good examples of reflective diary from students and
invite them to share their experiences with other peers
- Subject lecturer highlights examples of how students’ work
achieves the stated objectives, and it can serve as useful examples
to help other students make any improvement in their assignment.
- Provide feedback about the reflective diaries to students, and/or
determine students’ perception on the usefulness of reflective
writing in enhancing clinical learning by the use of questionnaire survey
(closed & open-ended questions) and to solicit suggestions on how
this exercise can be improved
next topic: Suggested Steps
for Getting Started on Reflective Writing -->
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