STEM III Reflection Essay

Describe

• • Describe the insight

    • An insight is something new that you learned or realised. The insight must be relevant to the course and ideally could change your thinking or behaviour in the future.

  • Describe the circumstances

    • Provide brief and relevant details of the situation from which you gained the insight. Say what was happening when this learning occurred.

Interpret

• • After describing your insight and the circumstances, you need to discuss its meaning. Interpret what the insight means. You can:

    • Explain why the insight is significant (in general but particularly to you).

    • Discuss the questions it raises (in general or for you).

    • Make connections between the insight and the course

    • Discuss factors that influenced your insight such as your personality type, the setting, or environment, your relationships with people involved

    • Discuss the consequences of the insight, how does it change things, does it cause confusion, doubt or deeper understanding about previous knowledge?

    • Whether the insight is valid and logical, transferable or relevant to other situations, a new idea or an evolved understanding

Evaluate

• • Once you have considered the meaning of the insight, you can discuss its value. What relevance does it have? How does it benefit your:

    • Learning?

    • Coursework?

    • future professional development?

Plan

• • Finally, say how you might apply this new insight in the future. You may use the new insight in:

    • your current course, placement or project

    • other courses in your degree

    • your future work or practice

    • your private or professional life in general

  • You may find you need to:

    • set behavioural or learning goals for yourself

    • develop strategies to learn concepts or skills that you are unfamiliar with or find challenging

Collaboration Learning Target

• Reflected on the application of the collaboration learning target relating to the STEM Tenet for Juniors:

TIME MANAGEMENT: Manage time for team projects.

• Addressed topics such as good and bad applications of these skills:

  • Delegating & accepting responsibility, demonstrating leadership

  • Using time effectively

  • Use of SMART tasks and project plans in planning and assigning work

  • Productive or non-productive use of class time

  • Effectiveness of working outside of class time and working independently

  • Effectiveness of integrating work created independently into a team project

  • Monitoring project progress and adjusting plans when needed

  • Following up on incomplete work to stay on track

  • Examples of good and bad risk management (accelerating work and completing deadlines early to reduce risk of unexpected issues late in project)

Innovation Learning Target

• Reflected on the application of the innovation learning target relating to the STEM Tenet for Juniors:

DESIRABILITY: Create desirable products and solutions.

• Addressed topics such as good and bad applications of these skills:

  • Application of the design thinking process (e.g., empathy, defining your challenge, ideating, prototyping, testing)

  • Insights from applying empathy (i.e., learning about the audience for whom you are designing)

  • Effectiveness of ideation (i.e., brainstorming and coming up with creative solutions)

  • Effectiveness of testing (i.e., returning to your original user group and testing your ideas for feedback)

  • Actively seeking out and taking creative risks

  • Application of sponsor feedback that positively influenced the approach to your solution

  • Lack of sponsor feedback that negatively impacted the approach to your solution

  • Proactively seeking out early and frequent feedback from diverse perspectives including sponsor, teacher, and fellow students

Critical Thinking Learning Target

• Reflected on the application of the critical thinking learning target relating to the STEM Tenet for Juniors:

PROTOTYPING: Iterative process, developing and testing multiple solutions.

• Addressed topics such as good and bad applications of these skills

  • Application of an iterative rapid prototyping process to explore multiple approaches to discover the best solution

  • Fabrication skills and their impact on the prototyping of your solution

  • Building a representation of your ideas to show to others

  • Use of analog and digital fabrication for prototyping

  • Use of digital modeling and simulation (e.g., TinkerCAD for physical and electronic prototyping)

  • Use of small scale prototyping and large scale prototyping

  • Impact of prototyping on final product development