Why strict with an individual reflection when you can do it in team?
When talking about reflection, I would say that it is not an easy task to get this from my students. For example, if there are 60 students in my class, there are only 2 or 3 people agree to do this for me. This may be because they don’t know how to reflect about it. And they may not want to share this directly with their lecturer.
I did a reflection with my students many times such as during the class, after the class or even after a group project. But I never ask my students to do a reflection after the exam. So this time, I decided to conduct an experiment with a way to help students reflect on their performance after an exam. But how?
Among all the reflection techniques, I chose the “what, so what, now what model” by Rolfe et al. (2001). The reasons that I choose this technique is because I’m scared that if I let my students do it all alone again, it will end up as always. Not many students want to share or talk anything much. And this is very important for me. I really want to know whether they can really apply the concepts that they learned in the class in their real life situation or not. This model consists of three main steps. First the students need to ask them self whether they understand the concepts that they learn in the class. Second, the students need to know what are the implications or the facts of that concepts. Third, they need to be able to identify the further action or new solutions.
In the take home exam, students were asked to visit restaurants and analyze key elements of food and beverage operations in relation to what they learned in the class. After submitting the assignment, I asked students to work randomly in the group of 3–4 people. Each student was asked to share their experiences in doing individual assignment. After sharing their own stories and difficulties in doing the assignment, I start to use to drop questions in to the group to stimulate the process. For instance, What happened? What did you notice? What is the problem or issue that you are facing? Students shared their experiences with each others. After that, I stepped further to the second stage “So What?” by asking them how does this activity effect to them and their future? Why is it important for them? The final step is “Now what?”. Students were asked about what do they need to do further with this? How can they turn this activity into something that matters in their future career or positive? All answers and insights from each group are shared on with the class and capture on the GoogleDoc.
Interestingly, students spoke out more than before. Many ideas and comments were written down. I think this may be because they feel more comfortable when talking with their classmates. (Not with their lecturer). More importantly, this method helps me to identify the issues or obstacles that frequently occur among students. Therefore, I can prioritize the issues and find the way to help my students to improve their capabilities and be ready for their future career. I think I will use this technique again next time in my class.
