Spotlight on SOTL: Getting more out of student reflection essays

This article is based on the following research article:

Lokker, C., & Jezrawi, R. (2022). Evaluating reflective writing to guide curricular improvements in health informatics education. Reflective Practice, 23(1), 44-56. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2021.1976132

Reflections are a popular pedagogical tool to assess student learning, but they can also be a rich source of information about effective teaching practices. In this article, Cynthia Lokker and Rita Jezrawi show us how they analyzed student reflections essay to identify effective teaching practices and make recommendations about areas for pedagogical improvement.

What did the researchers do and find?

Reflections are a popular pedagogical tool to assess student learning, but they can also be a rich source of information about effective teaching practices. Working in a faculty-student partnership Cynthia Lokker and Rita Jezrawi analyzed reflective essays written by 95 students from a graduate interdisciplinary program at McMaster. Their aims were to assess the pedagogical strengths and areas of improvement of the course/program under investigation.

Mapping their findings onto Fink’s Taxonomy (Fink, 2003), they identified the foundational knowledge they had gained in the course/program and which course topics students identified as catalysts for critical reflection or facilitated integration of concepts. By compiling areas of future learning students outlined in their reflections, Lokker and Jezrawi identified learning gaps and thus potential topical areas that could be added to the course’s/program’s extant curriculum or form the basis for the development of new courses.

Being that students commented on pedagogical practices that they felt best supported their learning, as well as which topics and learning activities aroused difficult emotions for students, they also found a systematic approach to inquiry assisted in identifying common sentiments across students’ experiences.

How might you use this research in your teaching?

If you assign reflections in your teaching to assess student learning, this research suggests that systematically analyzing student reflections can help identify elements of a course or academic program that are particularly effective or would benefit from improvement.

First, instructors can map the foundational knowledge students share in their reflections onto the course/program objectives to see how the two compare, thus demonstrating whether the learning outcomes of the course/program have (or have not) been met. Moreover, if considering course (re)design or the proposal of new courses, analyzing students’ reflective essays could help to identify areas of learning that students felt were lacking. Herein, students’ essays could constitute one form of support to justify the addition of new courses to the curriculum.

Second, by identifying which elements of a course and pedagogical practices students’ feel are the most effective and thought-provoking, instructors can be empowered to improve the student learning experiences by continuing and building on these elements/practices. Similarly, by identifying the elements of a course and pedagogical practice that arouse difficult emotions, instructors can take care to approach these topics/practices with more sensitivity and empathy.

And, finally, like Lokker and Jezrawi, you may also want to collaborate in a faculty-student partnership.

Works Cited

Fink, L. D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences. Jossey-Bass.