Education Commons^™

Promoting Student Reflection Through Reflective Writing Tasks, Elena Taylor

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

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Reflection is a necessary component of learning. Through reflective assignments and tasks, students are given opportunities to evaluate their learning and analyze strategies they use while acquiring and applying course material. Reflections also help students assess and think deeply about the information presented in class and thus better retain it. Through reflecting on their learning, students are also given the opportunity to formulate goals for future improvement. Reflective tasks can be implemented in any classroom, and writing is a powerful tool to do that. This article describes several writing tasks that …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 7, Issue 1, Spring 2023

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full-length Spring 2023 issue (Volume 7, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Access the online Pressbooks version (with downloadable EPUB format) here.

The Spring 2023 issue presents research and guidance on topics related to student self-reflection, participatory learning, and returning to the in-person learning following the COVID-19 pandemic. The first article takes a critical approach to understanding pedagogy with adult learners by involving students in the creation of course syllabi as a way to challenge ideologies related the roles of instructor and students. The second article blends research and narrative to explore how the experiences of …

The Show Must Go On: Challenges, Questions, And Pedagogical Pivots In Response To Covid-19, Patrick S. De Walt

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

On March 18, 2020, many universities and university systems had or were in their initial stages of transitioning to virtual teaching as a result of COVID-19. This transition had varied effects on all aspects of the university community. This paper explores this transition through the teaching experiences of a tenure-track professor during the pandemic. The examination of six sections of a capstone undergraduate course over the course of three semesters was conducted. Through self-reflection, many of the challenges faced shifting from face-to-face to a virtual environment were discussed. Among some of the challenges and limitations experienced when teaching nontraditional and/or …

Full Issue: Journal On Empowering Teaching Excellence, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2021

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

The full Spring 2021 issue (Volume 5, Issue 1) of the Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Fa 2020 About This Issue: The Power In Slowing Down

Journal on Empowering Teaching Excellence

Whether it be videotaping, guided classroom conversations, lecture-based, or written, feedback is the backbone of educational excellence. We use it to mentor beginning undergraduates, writers, readers, explorers, and experimenters. And, if we are thoughtful, feedback becomes a loop by which we slow down learning, we engage reading, writing and exploring, and we collaborate our way to becoming better.

Designing Socially-Mediated Reflection In Online Discussions, Martha M. Snyder

FDLA Journal

Reflection helps students understand the value of their learning experience. Reflection can be an individual activity, for example through journals, one-on-one discussions, and papers and it also can be socially-mediated, where students reflect together in social spaces either face-to-face or in online learning environments. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the value of reflection and the literature that supports it and share how socially-mediated reflection was designed and assessed in a Web-enhanced experiential learning course on water and sustainability. First, a review of the literature related to instructional design and learning theories that support reflection, reflection as a …

Reflective Documentation As A Movement Potential: Two Digital Platforms Building A Professional Learning Community, John Taylor, Defne Erdur

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Creating dance and training dancers is a collaborative and co-creative process, and teaching has a central role in the co-creative artistic processes. Yet dance teachers, whether free-lance or working in an institution, often develop and maintain their physical teaching practice in isolation. Additionally, because of the ephemeral nature of dance and the relational nature of dance education, these practices usually do not end up being recorded or documented as a body of knowledge. In the face of such a reality the online database IDOCDE.net provides a platform for the development and maintenance of an inclusive professional learning community through a …

The Experiential Journey Of Teacher-Scholars: “If You’Re Not A Teacher, You Just Don’T Get It”, Ashleigh L. Pelafigue

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Center of Graduate Schools (2015) published a report detailing applications, enrollment, and trends in graduate schools across the nation showing that approximately one third of all first-time graduate school applicants in master’s degree programs utilizing the GRE assessment identify their career path in either business or teacher education. The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of classroom teachers who concurrently pursued graduate studies to earn a master’s degree in education and to understand how adult learning provided opportunities for personal growth and the attainment of professional goals. Individual interviews and two focus groups were conducted …

Learning Through Design: Mooc Development As A Method For Exploring Teaching Methods, Robin Bartoletti

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

Exploring new pedagogical approaches and technologies in learning experiences such as MOOCs offers educators a clear opportunity to reflect on and expand their teaching methods and document effective practices. However, while research has affirmed the value of self-reflection as an important means to improve one’s pedagogical practices, very limited data about self-reflection during course design exists for online instructors in higher education. A team of MOOC course designers thus seized the opportunity to investigate whether they could improve their teaching practices by engaging in a connectivist and reflective process to create an innovative MOOC. The MOOC design team for Educational …

Leveraging Digital Communities Of Practice: How Asynchronous Digital Collaboration Afforded A Complex Reading/Writing Dialogue For Secondary School Students, Susanne Lee Nobles

English Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines a case study of a research unit taught to secondary school students with the inclusion of an asynchronous digital collaboration with college students. Over consecutive school years, two classes of high school seniors and two classes of college students, despite being geographically separated by more than 90 miles, worked together in multiple reading and writing exchanges within an online community as they read a primary text and as the secondary school students wrote research papers. This study seeks to understand the effects of this unit on the secondary school students’ thinking, reading, and writing skills, focusing specifically …

Evaluating E-Portfolio Using By Learning Stages: A Case Study In An Interdisciplinary Program, Ellis S.J. Fu, Jeff J.S. Huang, Stephen J.H. Yang, Anna Y.Q. Huang

Journal of Educational Technology Development and Exchange (JETDE)

This study conducts an investigation of posts in the e-portfolio platform of the program: “The interdisciplinary training program for talented college students in science.” Participants in this program were supposed to show their learning portfolios on this platform. Among the 2150 registered students, we randomly selected 126 students who have made at least 3 posts to become the target sample. By identifying the learning stages and posting styles shown by their posts, we find that students are mostly in the surface learning stages and weak in completing their learning portfolios. The results suggest that more strategies should be learned in …

Piecing Together The Diversity Puzzle, Rochelle Ripple, Jose' Villavicencio

Perspectives In Learning

Current literature focuses on the importance of listening to students’ voices and the insights they have on their experiences. According to Dewey (1916/1944), having interactions with other groups helps in the process of democratic growth because one is better able to understand other perspectives. Freire (1985) added another layer of richness to Dewey’s ideas about reflection and experience. He believed that people exist “in and with the world.” Fraser (1994) describes the need for different voices and different views in educating children in a public sphere of critical inquiry and multiple voices (different genders and people of all colors). In …