Writing Reflections

Step One: Select the objective

When you completing a Learning Portfolio, you will collect evidence (artifacts) of your progress toward meeting specific objectives. One artifact may fit under more than one goal or objective (e.g. A paper may fit under the Effective Communicator for your writing skills and a Change Agent objective for how you accessed resources). The goals are the Reflective Individual, the Effective Communicator and the Change Agent. Select one objective for each reflection.

Step Two: Select the degree to which you have met the objective

Once you identify the artifact, your reflection may benefit from you rating the skill level that the learning experience demonstrates. In some Learning Portfolios, for example, there are even pre-stated categories of development to select: beginning, developing, competent, and advanced.

This is an opportunity for you to think about your progress toward proficiency in this objective. Would you consider this artifact to be evidence of just beginning to understand the objective, or does this artifact demonstrate a more advanced proficiency? This is a subjective rating scale and you may find yourself selecting numbers in non-sequential order as you progress through your education. This may take just a few sentences or a paragraph.

Step Three: What did you learn?

The second part of your reflection is an opportunity to summarize what you learned from constructing this artifact. This should not be a summary of the project/assignment/experience itself, but a reflection on what all you learned from the process. For example, if you submit a paper that you wrote for class, you might begin by expressing how you approached writing the paper. Did you review the paper requirements? Conduct research? Ask for help? What is the role of the writer? Do you feel you met that goal? How did you determine when the paper was "done"? What practices did you employ that you want to retain for the next written assignment? Are there any new skills you want to develop? This portion of the reflection should be one or two paragraphs.

Step Four: Consider the objective again

Once you have thought about how you approached the artifact and what you learned from it, put the artifact in a larger context. How does this experience remind you of other experiences you have had? How does this experience contribute to the development of the Educated Citizen Core Curriculum objectives? What does it contribute to your education? Do you have goals tied to this objective? How might you accomplish those goals? These are broad questions and may be difficult to answer. In fact, you may list more questions than answers in this part! This should be one or two paragraphs as well.

Looking back on this class, I have realized just how much my writing has improved since the beginning of the quarter and that first assignment. I went from being a writer that was not confident in his work and over-thought everything into someone who found his own writing style, and can quickly and effectively write an essay (of course revising it as well). This portfolio was made so that I can show off what I have learned from this class, and show off just how much I have improved as a writer. The work that I selected show that I have made incredible progress this term. In the beginning of the quarter there were many things that I had to revise in my essays, and they took me twice as long to write as well. However, by the end of the quarter writing, although not quite second nature to me, has become much simpler and my writing in general has become much stronger as well.

There are many things that I have learned about myself this quarter. I have learned that if I do not over-think my papers while I am writing them, and stop trying to make them perfect (until the end), writing becomes much easier for me. This portfolio not only shows everyone how I have progressed as a writer, but it also shows what I have learned about myself as a writer. It contains not only my best works, but also my mistakes, and through the work in here I am able to see the mistakes that I commonly make while writing such as over-generalizing things and writing about something before I completely understand it myself. However there are also things that I realized woks well for me in my writing. Unlike what I thought in the beginning of the quarter, I write much better when I make a general outline and write out the paper without correcting myself as I go. In this English course I have learned many things about myself as a writer and have finally found a way of writing that works best for me.