As usual, I found this assignment to be well worth the time invested. Being able to reflect on class discussions, assignments, and readings are such crucial components of learning. Reflective thinking is defined as "the process of creating and clarifying the meaning of experience (past or present) in terms of self (self in relation to self and self in relation to the world)...[to which] the outcome of the process is changed conceptual perspective" (Boyd & Fales, 1983, p. 101). If a student wishes to benefit from knowledge presented in their classes (whether online or face-to-face) they MUST reflect on what it is they study, participate in as far as class discussions, activities, assignments, etc. Reflective thinking allows us to control our learning process which is crucial to online courses as I tend to think that online courses are usually designed from a constructivist learning theory approach and reflective thinking is definitely a key ingredient.
This assignment helped me to hone in on other perspectives that I may not have seen simply by participating in class discussions. Both utilizing both (the blog and class discussions) does give the learner the ability to incorporate new knowledge into their existing schematic to construct a new perspective, thus, true learning. I think all courses should implement some form of an activity that requires students to reflect on their class assignments.
I also found the component of this assignment where we had to respond to another student's blog quite interesting. I'm not an experienced teacher so I found it a bit difficult to respond to their reflective thinking in a manner that would help them to reach a new understanding (I believe that was a critical element of the assignment). While I think I did a good job (I'm still finishing up my responses to their posts) this was more difficult for me. It's different than responding to a post on the discussion board but AI still found it very helpful. I now know that I need to work on not just providing feedback to learners but providing feedback that offers new insight.
References
Boyd, E., & Fales, A. (1983). Reflective learning: Key to learning from experience. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 23(2), 99. Retrieved from Academic Search Complete Database.
Kateesha,
ReplyDeleteI actually did a self reflexive critique of my f2f for a class project last spring. Because personal perspectives can be focused in a direction with our realization, I usually rely on some outside sources for information. I noticed you used the Academic Searchh Complete database from ebsco. I used sources from this database for my project as well. They are several recent article that discuss critical reflection for teaching that apply to all critical reflections. A title search on "critical reflection" or "critical reflexive" was very helpful for me in locating several articles.
I also believe our book has a mix of theory with some "how to" procedures. It took me a while to get used to the mix since my academic background is theoretical and my program is applied. But it is good to switch things.
Good luck in the future
T. Malone Thompson