A Student Comment about Learner Reflections
Another part of the class that I enjoyed was writing both the chapter and internet summaries, because it’s one thing to reflect upon the reading and give a general synopsis and opinion regarding the text, but it requires an entirely different mode of thinking to analyze internet articles on the same subject. For instance, I could passively read the book and factually state my opinion on a particular subject matter, but researching and reviewing current criminal justice articles demands more attention and more of a thought process in order to linguistically verbalize your thoughts and feelings.
This course has stretched my thinking in very many ways, and in some ways has changed my thinking completely. This course challenged me greatly each and every week. I learned a lot more about who I am as an ethical and sentient being. I thought that basically everything was right or it was wrong when I came into this course but as I leave I know it is much more complicated than that. As a teacher the subject of ethics will come up many times. I want to be the most ethical teacher, meaning fair, but at points I am sure that I will go the wrong way. I will consider each of the children and what impact my decisions in the classroom will have on them before I make that ethical or unethical decision.
An Instructor’s Comment about Students Reflecting on their own Learning
I was reluctant to ask students to reflect on their own learning as I was redeveloping my course. I really didn’t think I would get any constructive responses back from the students and I thought they would think of it as just another exercise without any meaning. At least for my students, I got the opposite reaction. Students found this exercise as an opportunity to let me know that they were still struggling with some concepts and I was able to go back and give some additional information. When asked what concepts the student felt they understood with some degree of certainty, when it came time for the assessment if they didn’t perform then it gave us the opportunity to revisit the concepts. Students were very glad to relate the concepts we were studying with their own experience–many said that they hadn’t really thought about it before but once they did it really started to make more sense.
This not only helped me to give immediate feedback and make sure the concepts that were still fuzzy got the proper attention, it also gave me the opportunity to fix the course for its next offering. I will continue to ask students to reflection on their own learning.
Resourses
Possible Rubric (.doc) for use in assessing personal reflection activities
Are we looking for tools to use for reflection? See WordPress, Blackboard Discussion Board.
