Designing Reflection Activities
Reflection activities and prompts can be integrated and assessed at different stages of student learning. Some activities may be introduced early, while others may be more effectively integrated later in the process; some responses may need to be graded (high-stakes), while others checked for completion (low-stakes). Regardless of when students complete an activity, they should receive some type of feedback from the instructor or facilitator. The high- and low-stake activities are described according to how each could be used to facilitate reflection and how each could be implemented as a low-or high-stakes assessment. Remember that any reflection activity will need to address fundamental design questions:
Must reflective work be graded?
Not every reflective opportunity needs to be formally graded. It depends on your purpose for reflection and the context in which you are asking students to reflect. However, students should receive some kind of feedback about their reflections. For example, low-stakes reflection opportunities may be directed by a discussion and brief or informal feedback including a comment or an open-ended question about a journal post. It could also include a completion grade for effort. Asking questions about the post opens dialog between you and the student, while also demonstrating that you are actually reading the reflections. Integrating several low-stakes reflection opportunities throughout the course helps the student cultivate the "habit" of reflective thinking and will better prepare him for deeper reflection and high-stakes assignments. For more information on integrating reflection, see low-stakes and high-stakes assignments. Also see Instructional Tips.