Assessment Type: Purpose:
Topic: Reflective Journal - individual assessment -1500 words.
The individual reflection report is designed to allow students to evaluate their growth in knowledge and skills throughout the subject. It is designed to encourage students to take ownership of their learning, their performance and their outcomes.
This assessment contributes specifically to Learning Outcome a, c and d.
Reflections on the student's increased communication and academic scholarship skills during the trimester, and identification points for future improvement.
Task Details: Students need to write a reflection report discussing and analysing their progress in communication and academic scholarship skill development.
Students should demonstrate the improvement they have achieved to date, and conclude with at least three actions points that can improve their future performance, using the benefit of experience and hindsight.
Students who maintain a reflective journal (see below) will find this assessment very rewarding and have substantial data to support their reflections.
The report is to be reflective and evaluative (use referenced theory), and it is important that you offer critical insight. The review should focus on what you learnt as a consequence of the subject's assessment tasks, the use of new found skills, or "moments of truth" (e.g., finding out how to give and receive feedback - the hard way).
Reflective journal
Generally, a reflective journal requires you to map the progress and changes in your thinking about a subject or a topic, or about the learning journey in which you are engaged in.
- You may be asked to make regular entries in a journal (over a period of time), which would then have to be submitted and assessed.
- You may also be asked to use your reflections built up over a period of time as the basis of an essay or a report.
- If the journal is to be assessed, it should be well structured and clearly expressed for the benefit of your audience, even though it may have elements of personal writing.
- If the journal is for yourself, to be used as the basis of an essay or a report, make sure that your writing makes sense to you when you refer to it to compose your essay or report.
Consider the following when writing a reflective journal:
1. Describe the events and your experience - What did I do/hear/see?
2. Interpret and evaluate the events from your perspective - What do I think about it now? How does it relate to other things that I know? Explain your experience; reveal your new insights, connections with other learning, your hypotheses, and your conclusions.
3. Reflect on how this information will be useful to you - What questions do I have? Have I changed how I think about the situation? Where do I go from here?
If you have been given specific questions or tasks to perform, use these as headings to help organise your writing.