The purpose of this page is to reflect on the process of my ePortfolio project and ePortfolios as a high-impact practice. 

9/25-  In the many years I’ve taught writing courses, from college prep in adult education to developmental and college writing courses at a community college, I only included reflective writing later in my teaching career. Students submitted a paper portfolio that included assignments that showcased their writing skill progress and wrote a short reflection essay about how they’ve improved and highlighted key learning over the semester. Until beginning this FLC, I never thought too deeply about how powerful this could be if reflection was incorporated throughout a course or across courses.  Now working with students during one on one appointments only, I’m wondering how to better help students to be more reflective; a first step is aiming to ask more questions so they reflect on their writing process, at least verbally.

10/2- Interesting to find reflective practice in an article I was reading on how to teach antiracist reading. It seems obvious now, but in our quest to become antiracist, the reflection model is a way to move awareness into action. 

10/8- As I look over the various reflection models, I think about the choices I made over the summer to simplify steps down to three – describe, analyze, reflect. Because it is intended to be a introductory resource,  I did this to make the process accessible, but I’m worried it is over-simplified. I wonder if the reflect step could have been broken into reflect and act (or plan to act). Those ended up getting combined. Action step: revisit the importance of using reflection to take a future action. 

It’s critical for an assignment to be clear about purpose for the ‘analyze’ and ‘reflect’ steps; for example, the resource I helped develop was intended to encourage empathy and awareness of bias. The analysis needs to be clearly related to course outcomes so students see the connection.  I think of analysis as responding to the why and how questions.  The reflection may focus more on the looking at an idea or situation from different angles and perspectives,  and that that, in turn, shifts or expands our own perspectives. Possible action step- create a list of different reflection examples.

10/23- I found an article this week that frames a way to assess levels of reflection writing (posted on my resources page). It includes four categories: habitual non-reflection, understanding, reflection, and critical reflection. I’m realizing that many assignments are focused on “understanding” of concepts. The reflection level shows applications or connections of course content  to personal experience, and critical reflection demonstrates a shift in perception. Next step is to delve more into this critical reflection idea. 

10/29 – Deb and I met today to discuss how our projects were going as well as the four category reflection assessment described above. She noted that the reflection assignment so far was focused on the “understanding” level, and that moving toward reflection would be a goal of the next assignment. We briefly discussed scaffolding vs fitting an entire reflection cycle within one assignment — it really depends on the outcomes. This tool has good potential for clarifying how to assess. We also talked about the use of an example/ model so students can see what reflection steps can look like.  Faculty can be concerned about students simply trying to make their responses look like the example. Perhaps using a model is a good place to start,  and then helping those who need to make a response more their “own” by providing explicit feedback. 

12/2 – As I look back over the past few months, I see three phases of my project: learning about a variety of reflective models, introducing  the why, what and how of reflective practice  to students,  and discovering two ways of assessing reflective writing. The models and assessment approaches can inform assignment prompts and appropriate scaffolding to guide students through their practice. For health professions, it appears that connecting course concepts to practical and personal experience is a focus; this level of thinking falls into the “reflection” level. The “critical reflection” level may be difficult to achieve in one course because it involves a shift in beliefs or assumptions. What I find interesting in the assessment models is the absence of the “taking action” step described by both Dewey and Rogers ( as cited in Eynon & Gambino, p. 49). The ePortfolio can serve a critical function in documenting the process and evolution of student learning, perspective transformation, and experimenting with acting on new ways of thinking.