Teaching and Professional Fellowship Report 2004/5 : Improving reflective practice through learning journals and virtual learning environments.

摘要

This paper describes work carried out within the Fellowship with the intention of increasingudstudent achievement by improving students’ abilities to reflect, evaluate, and act upon theirudevaluations. I also sought to improve communication across a large Course. Previous externaludverifiers have recognised the lack of evaluative practice within Foundation Courses as audnational issue.udMy work since 2002 has involved the introduction, implementation and development of newudlearning tools. These tools have evolved from the very simple: An A5 pre-printed journal,udwritten into by students, called the Thinktank, to more complex virtual learning environmentsud(VLE) within the University’s Blackboard site. A survey of students’ final major projectudportfolios indicates that students who use these tools effectively are more likely to achieveudmerit & distinction grades in their final examinations. To create the VLE I built and activateduda Foundation Studies Blackboard site. I have found that both the Thinktank and Blackboardudhave merit and have attempted to combine their use across the course.udI piloted a number of Blackboard-specific assignments to encourage on-line peer groupudlearning through the use of asynchronous discussion boards. I observed a number ofudadvantages in using discussion boards, which facilitate a combination of live, (slowed)uddiscussion, and personal reflective practice. The use of discussion boards also brings moreudbenefits for learners such as flexibility of time and place, more time to engage in an onlineuddebate, transparency, a certain levelling of different language abilities, automatic archiving:ud(students can revisit the discussion at any point). Taking discussion board ideas back into liveudstudio debates produced a high level of student engagement.udA more open-ended pilot, the moblog, allows students working on an expressive, selfdirectedudproject to send SMS messages to a webpage within the Blackboard site. With thisudpilot I was interested in exploring the potential of the mobile phone as ‘sketchbook/ journal’.udStudents were positive about the pilot and despite the limitations of SMS messaging, quicklyudestablished a recognisable 'voice' and the beginnings of an online community