Reflective Prompts

This page has suggested prompts for each of these types of pages - it is not expected that someone will use all of these. They are suggestions to get your ideas going

• Themes

• Community Engagement

• Race and Power

• Project/Entrepreneurial skills

• Skills and Goals - e.g.

  • Writing

  • Quantitative Reasoning

  • Facilitation Skills

• Discipline-specific expectations

• Retrospective Essay Prompts

• Division III Ideas

In addition, here is a guide to self reflection and using your narrative evaluations to monitor your learning.

Themes

If you have a page to discuss the role of a particular type of work, area, field of study, etc. (dependent on your framing) in your concentration, consider some of these topics for your reflection:

• What is the importance of the theme to your work?

• How has your understanding in this area changed over time?

• Which examples of work relate to this particular area of your interest or inquiry?

• What do the artifacts show - that is, what should the reader look for? 

• Share which courses you took in this field.  Why were they were important to you?

• Which activities – both in and out of class – contributed most to your learning in this area?

or anything else applicable to the theme. Include, and discuss, examples of your work that you embed.

Community Engagement

In your reflections, consider:

• What activities/tasks did you perform

• What community-defined need(s) did your work address?

• What challenges did you face and how did you address them?

• What knowledge have you gained from your work, and how has this experience furthered your learning in general or in relation to the central themes of your Division II Concentration?

• How did this learning mesh with, expand or contradict what you have encountered through your courses and reading? What new questions were raised or interests sparked?

Race and Power 

You might use the terminology from multiple cultural perspectives or about Race and Power. In either case, consider what work you will show to demonstrate your learning. Much of your thinking might come from a specific course or it might be infused in much of what you do. In any event, don't just show your work, discuss what has changed in your thinking and how your new understanding affects your work. Specificity matters. The link to the current requirement is here.

In reflecting, about Race and Power think about: How the study of the history, politics, and culture of race in the United States and elsewhere have enabled you to understand better the conditions that underlie discrepancies of power that often fall along racial lines. 

• What has challenged your thinking? 

• What have you learned? 

• How has it affected your work or your commitments moving forward?

Project/Entrepreneurial Skills

You might discuss which of the skills and practices below id you learn or get better at? 

What obstacles did you face, and how did you address them? 

What do you want to continue to work on?

• Initiating a project and defining its scope

• Planning, including setting and meeting deadlines

• Doing background Research

• Creating a draft or prototype and revising

• Communicating your ideas to others

• Reflecting on your process

Skills and Goals

Create a page for any given skill, goal, or theme you see in your work. Write about:

• What you hoped to learn or be able to do

• What patterns you see

• What happened to your learning

• Reflect on your growth and what lead to that growth

• Embed work that is relevant - even if it exists on other pages for other purposes

Some examples of skills pages:

Writing - Show some examples of your written work. Reflect on such things as:

• How did your writing change over time?

• What piece(s) of writing are you most proud of?

• What helped you improve your writing?

• What challenges do you still face?

• In what genres have you written?

• What are some plans you have for continuing to improve your writing?

Quantitative Reasoning - You can consider work in any field that involved quantitative reasoning.

• In what ways did your quantitative reasoning improve? (describe the kinds of quantitative reasoning you used).

• What challenges do you still face?

• What plans do you have for improvement?

     Facilitation Skills

You can consider work you have done in and out of the classroom in facilitating discussions with peers, running workshops, leading clubs, etc.

• Consider what was important to you in this role?

• What was your facilitation style

• What did you learn by doing this work?

Discipline-specific expectations

Some faculty might have discipline-specific expectations and instructions on how to include them in your ePortfolio. Please check with your committee to see if this applies to your work!

The Retrospective Essay

The purpose of the retrospective is to frame your portfolio and to highlight your growth over time as a result of completing a number of courses and other experiences. The reader should be able to understand what changed in your thinking, what skills you developed, and what experiences were most impactful to you.

Creating your frames first and doing some of the reflective exercises on the tips and resources page should help you with your retrospective, as they help you to see themes and patterns, to see how your ideas have changed, and to set new goals for Division III. 

The retrospective should NOT simply be a chronological account of what you did in Division II. It is best organized around pivotal experiences, changes in your thinking or skills, strengths you want to point out, etc. Look across your work, organize your work around important ideas (by creating pages to highlight different aspects of your learning - by content, process, progress, etc.), and re-read your self- and narrative-evaluations. 

Revision makes a difference. Share an early draft with your chair or committee.

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 Example reflective questions to help you write your retrospective (no one answers all of them):

• Description of your concentration (try to do that in 300 words or fewer). What was your Div II about? What questions drove you? Did you make progress answering them? What changed in your thinking? Think about how you would describe your work to a friend, family member, etc. What are the major themes? How does your work cross courses and/or out-of-class experiences? Are there questions that held your attention?

• Activities in Division II (one or two paragraphs). Briefly describe how you pursued your goals. Did you take classes? At Hampshire? In the Five Colleges? At other institutions that you transferred in? What about field study, independent studies/Special Projects?

  • Here you might note how well your Div II holds together, that is, was it a coherent study?

  • What would you say about the breadth and depth of your concentration?

• Summary of your evaluations (try to do this in 250 words or less). After reading through your evaluations, summarize the major themes. Are the patterns that emerge? What are your strengths that professors note? Are there things they suggest you work on? Do you agree? How have you responded to the feedback you have received (or how do you plan to)?

• What important experiences impacted your thinking? Were there specific moments or experiences that caused you to change direction or that solidified your direction (pivotal experiences)?

• Did your work in the classroom connect to things you did outside of the classroom – in community engaged experiences, internships, or projects? How so?

• What worked well? What do you wish you had added?

• Some people include their reflections on Multiple Cultural Perspectives/Race and Power in the retrospective, others have a separate page for this.

• Some include their reflections on Community Engagement and Learning in the retrospective, others have a separate page.

If you've already written on these topics in other parts of the ePortfolio, you don't need to reproduce it here.  You can link back to the reflection that you've done across other pages, making a note in your essay about where you mentioned it.

Div III Page Prompts

As you look across your Division II work, consider:

• What do you love doing?

• What questions do you still have?

• What skills do you hope to develop further?

• Where you want to go after Div III?  What will help you get there?

• How do you plan to use the break between semesters to get started?

• At this moment, what do you imagine your Div III will be about? What form will it take? What are your goals?

Write about your ideas as they stand now. Be as specific as you can about your questions, goals, and plan (knowing they will change).