386 - Reflection on Reflections: How Students Experience Reflection Assignments?

Abstract: Reflection exercises provide students with opportunities for deep learning. The objective was to evaluate students' experiences during multiple reflection assignments to identify strengths and weaknesses of the activity and identify evidence-based strategies for improvement. A total of 21 students reflected every week during a semester long group project in an Animal Science Capstone course. The final reflection assignment included evaluation of the previous weekly reflection assignments. For this study, the final reflection assignments were collected and a qualitative thematic analysis was conducted with strengths, weaknesses, learning theories involved, and student wishes as major theme categories. The reflections were coded in MAXQDA. Network maps were created with Girvan-Newman cluster analyses in the UCINET and NetDraw software. We identified 9 clusters(Q=0.741) from correlations of the codes at p < 0.01(Fig.1). Node sizes indicated betweeness centrality values. In the cluster with the highest correlations, students thought they were able to track progress, develop critical thinking, and develop self-awareness but expressed that distinct prompts with less frequent submissions would be more effective. Students reported reflection activities were helpful to maintain focus on the project but indicated that support for self-evaluation and a structured format would help them. To be more consistent, students focused on reporting weekly activities rather than reflecting on them. Although students briefly acknowledged theoretical aspects of learning including; knowledge construction, schema building, and perspective taking, students struggled with lack of reflection skills and not being able to perform metacognition. Overall, students enjoyed the process, took the assignment as stress relief and self-care, appreciated peer support, and attributed self-realization, change in beliefs and assumptions to reflection assignments. Some students failed to make connections, and considered lack of relevance and scaffolding which, could be addressed using structured goal setting, as well as constantly recalling and recapping the activities.