Saturday 3 October 2009

Further reflections on core activity 2.4

This post returns to the task for core activity 2.4 - to post a comment to your blog reflecting on your own attitude to reflection in learning and on the usefulness or otherwise of blogging as a means of doing it. After completing the readings* for the task, I think my feelings about reflecting on learning, and using a blog as a tool for this are relatively unchanged from my previous post.

However, there are a couple of points/feelings/ideas that I noticed while going through the readings.

Firstly, I felt I identified with those students in Crème's work who would prefer a friendly non-judgemental reader than an assessor to view their reflections. My reflections feel personal, and while I'm happy with the purpose and practice of reflecting, it's the sharing for assessment that I feel is more difficult.

I also noted that the type of reflection I have been doing in these blog posts is more akin to the 'progressive journal' rather than ''reflective writing such as that used in professional courses where students have to relate theory to examples of their practice, a distinction noted by Crème. I think that this is probably ok for the current stage of the course, and my treatment of the blog as more of a learning journal. However, I think that I will have to undertake some more specific, directed reflection, in order to experience these techniques, to develop my abilities in them, and (not least) to meet the course requirements.

I have an ongoing concern about meeting all the criteria for the course assessment. There seem to be many, and I feel that there is likely to be a conflict between honesty and personal investment, and the need to meet assessment requirements in a systematic way. Hopefully the OU's careful development of criteria, designed to assess the development of reflective skills which actually be an enabling factor which may allow me to feel confident that I have conducted an appropriately comprehensive reflection.

A couple of other slightly unrelated noticings and reflections...
- I found reading the papers much easier because I had specific information which I wanted to extract from them, rather than just gain a general understanding
- Pointing our activities to blogs and forums means I am seeing others approaching the tasks differently. This is good and bad. It raises anxiety that I am not doing it right, or am interpreting it wrongly if I approach things differently to others. Equally, seeing these differences between our approaches helps reinforce the recognition of our diversity of backgrounds, expertise, interests and interpretations - and that fact that a varitey of contributions are both interesting and valuable.

[Readings were:

2 comments:

  1. Hi Alice

    I agree with you I would also prefer a friendly reader and I will try to be one. You have identified a key issue - when you assess anything it tends to change its nature and contents. A personal learning journal for your personal thoughts is going to be different from reflection for an assignment. However, I think the refections you are providing largely meet the OU requirements so I don't think you need do a great deal

    Best Wishes

    Alan

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  2. That's good to know - thanks for the reassurance Alan.

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