Academic Communication Skills

Week 5 – Session 1

Reflective Writing Review

Please sit with your presentation groups

3

Learning objectives

• Review of reflection

• Additional reflective writing advice

4

Warm-up

• Think back to your reflection classes.

• What do you remember about reflective writing?

5

Add notes

• Exchange your poster with another group.

• Add more notes to the poster you are looking at.

6

• How would you structure your reflective writing?

• Which steps would you start with?

Structure

Awareness

Of discomfort, or action/experience

Describe the situation

Include salient feelings, thoughts, events or features

Analyse feeling and knowledge

Identify and challenge assumptions – imagine

and explore alternatives

Evaluate the relevance of knowledge

Does it help to explain/resolve problem? How was your use of

knowledge?

Identify any learning

Which has occurred?

7

Structure

• Start with the Awareness and Describe steps

• Then Analysis (internally and externally)

• End with Evaluate and Identify

• 3-4 paragraphs

8

Reflective writing

• The different aspects of reflection can be shown in the different types of evidence you give.

• Personal Experience

• Giving Examples

9

Reflective writing – Personal Experience

• Good at showing thinking back (describe) and thinking inwards (analysis).

• Giving real and specific (not vague) experiences

• E.g. “In the past I tried to do (X) but it didn’t work for me because (Y). This may have been caused by (Z) stopping me”

10

Reflective writing – Giving Examples

• Good at showing forward (future)

• Giving hypothetical (but realistic) examples

• E.g. “In the future I could try to do (A) and (B) before (Y time) so that I won’t have the problem of (Z) stopping me from doing (X)”

11

Common Mistakes with Reflective Writing

• Writing objectively (not thinking inward)

– “Some people have problems with time management because…”

– This is about YOU and YOUR DIFFICULTIES

• Not identifying the root cause of the difficulty (not thinking back)

– “I didn’t manage my time so I must manage my time”

“I didn’t manage my time well because… which could be caused by… or caused by…”

12

Common Mistakes with Reflective Writing

• Not including external aspects (no outward thinking)

– Did other people influence your actions?

– How did your actions effect others?

– What can you learn by how others do it?

• Not including a description of current level with skill

• Not including a detailed description of what was learned.

13

Writing practice

• Think about a time when you failed to meet a goal that you had set for yourself.

• Write a short reflection

– Awareness

– Describe

– Analyse

– Evaluate

– identify

14

Writing practice

• As a group give feedback about the writing.

• Was the description specific?

• Did they write subjectively?

• Did they identify external aspects?

• Did they express their current level?

• Did they discuss what they learned?

15

Homework

• Keep watching 10 videos about ‘technology in education’

• Take and organise your notes

• Put similar information together.

• We will use them for group discussion in the third session of week 6