WATA: Encouraging Regularized and Habitual Reflection in an Era of "Tweets" and "Status Updates"

Perhaps you've pondered this like I have...

How can I get my students to think about _________ [insert concept/topic/theory here] when they leave the classroom today?

How do you get your students to think about _________ [insert concept/topic/theory here] when they leave your classroom?

Critical Reflection is "active, persistent, and careful consideration of any belief...[that] includes a conscious and voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of evidence and rationality." ~ Dewey, 1933

When my students walk away, what do they take away?

WATA!

• simple

How might I harness the power of these two familiar terms and social media processes?

Need to my so they know what's up.

?

Status

Update

Need to this to my peeps.

Tweet

?

"WATA!": Encouraging Regularized & Habitual Reflection

...in an Era of "Tweets" & "Status Updates"

Bennett Cherry, California State University San Marcos

Miller's 7 Creative Arenas

creativity myths

barriers to creativity

creativity

“Reflection is a form of response of the learner to experience.”

~Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985

[blank]

WATA...in their words

The answer is...

• "to repeat with meaning" ~ Vaughn
• "hearing something and then incorporating it into your life" ~ Quy
• "it's making connections across the board" ~ Heather
• "what you remember the most...what sticks with you" ~ Robert
• "a catchy way for active learning" ~ Sean
• "lessons learned and sometimes words of caution" ~ Miguel
• "regular reminder to be an active learner and apply what you've learned" ~ Rob
• "helps me take notes...to think about what I should remember" ~ Robert
• "good tool to take away from school and use in real life" ~ Melissa
• "life is all about the takeway...I regularly use the phrase with my cohort" ~ Shaun
• "it's the lasting impression" ~ Jessica

Reflection.

WDYRFOLC? "What do you remember...?"

One on One Hallway Conversation

Levels of WATA

Online Discussion Forums

"How can I encourage my students to take more away from my class?"

these were good attempts with decent results, but...I wanted a more unified approach to encouraging "reflection"

take + away = takeaway

References for Reflection

• unified

• Boud, Keogh, & Walker (1985): reflection as cognitive and/or affective personal responses to experiences that shape, develop, and further refine new understandings of concepts.
• Catterall, Maclaran, & Stevens (2002): adds to reflection by intentionally including a broader macro-level perspective that invites critical reflection. Aligns critical reflection with an active and process-based learning that is purposively personal.
• Graeff (1997): proposes that deep understanding and learning comes from “continuous questioning and reflecting in new situations.”
• Hay, Peltier, & Drago (2004): propose that perspective changes through exploration and internal examination by way of reflection.
• Kember, et al. (2000): develop an instrument to measure student level of reflection and propose a nonreflectionreflection continuum that anchors habitual action opposite intensive reflection.
• Klimoski (2007): managers are reflective practitioners who, in addition to observing self and others’ actions, steps away from such actions and identifies new insights and “takes the time to communicate with others the lessons learned”.
• Mintzberg & Gosling (2004): reflection as “wondering, probing, analyzing, synthesizingand struggling”.
• Peltier, Hay, & Drago (2005): development of an instrument to measure reflection across four hierarchical levels: “habitual action, understanding, reflection, and intensive reflection”. Propose two important conditions for reflection: “instructor-to-student interaction and student-to-student interaction”.
• Pfeffer & Fong (2002): make a call for reflection as part of an improved business school instructional model where experiential learning anchors learning by doing.
• Scott (2010): defines reflection as a distilling process of meaning from experience. Relates reflection to the effectiveness of MBA learning portfolios. Mentions the idea of reflection across the curriculum, rather than constrained to a singular course. Identifies three stages of reflection as an integrated learning process: experience, analysis, and reevaluation.

• quirky

concept

that works!