Benefits of Reflective Assignments

Led by Dr. Lesley Bartlett, we began our workshop on reflective writing across disciplines yesterday by visiting Jenny Moon's list of benefits that derive from reflective writing assignments. First, as with most well-designed writing assignments, it slows down the rush of learning in an academic environment in such a way as to allow students time to incorporate new ideas and information and then to link these to others already in their store.

Hopefully, then, a second benefit derives from the students' ability to link the new ideas to others that have a more personal meaning for them. In other words, the new ideas that they learn are not immediately disposable after papers and exams are done, but will continue to be meaningful to those students who've been given the time and opportunity to discover that meaning for themselves.

Another benefit arising from slowing the process is the opening this gives students to think as much about how they learn as what they learn, what Moon and others describe as metacognition. In many respects, this seems the most difficult and, at times, esoteric of the outcomes of reflection, but I don't value it the less for that. In fact, as students mature over their college years, their capacity for self-examination probably grows and this might facilitate the metacognition and, in turn, make the reflective writing even more valuable in their junior and senior years.

Of course, the benefit apparent to me in metacognition is that the ability to see how one receives, processes, and applies information also then gives one the chance to challenge one's own assumptions, to challenge previously received information, which is another item on Moon's list.

As a workshop group, then, we expanded on Moon's list of the benefits of reflective writing. One person spoke of the way it encourages students to link new ideas to future prospects, to speculatively project their new insights. Another pointed out that students' reflection could also provide their teachers with feedback that could be used to adjust their methods and assignments as needed to be more effective. Yet another spoke of how reflection increased the chance that the learning could be positively transformative for the student. I can see this possibility, too; not that previous methods of instruction can't be transformative, but in the last half-century of standardized tests, assembly-line education, and business models, anything that we can do to increase the likelihood of ongoing, positive transformation should be encouraged.

In a final addition to Moon's list, I spoke up about how reflective writing most likely increased the students' self-awareness, which is implied by the other items on Moon's list anyway. Our students seem to be trained by their culture to see themselves as consumers, as employees, as dutiful citizens, but do they see themselves as producers, as culture-changers? Do they see themselves and their potential beyond these categories? If we can get them to see beyond their prescribed roles they might not only transform themselves but also transform their culture.