Technology enhanced reflection and meta-reflection: Guiding learners through reflective processes

Do your students submit reflective journals that read like ‘What I did On My Summer Holidays’? Inspired by the work of Professor Carolyn Mair, the purpose of this paper is to outline a ‘research project in progress’ focusing on technology-enhanced reflective practice. Findings to date will also be discussed.

In order to increase the efficiency of learning and the development of skills, students are expected to work through reflective models and produce reflective journals for assessment. Many students, however, appear not to engage with the reflective processes and often repeat unhealthy patterns. In addition to this, reflective journals submitted for assessment can lack the detail and depth required to gain higher grades and frequently take the form of simple descriptions of what happened week by week. Even when students do engage with a reflective process, there still appears to be a tendency to miss learning opportunities and not to notice barriers to learning due to the lack of regular review of reflective diaries. The effectiveness of reflective models also need to be reviewed(meta-reflection) as students also tend to neglect this even when encouraged to do so.

This paper introduces methods to guide students through reflective and meta-reflective processes using online forums and spreadsheets. There will also be a summary of the success of these methods so far in this evolving research project. Although this project is applied to the development of musical skills and ensemble performance techniques, much of the methodology applies to all disciplines.