"Reflection is a form of mental processing that we use to fulfill a purpose or to achieve some anticipated outcome. It is applied to gain a better understanding of relatively complicated or unstructured ideas and is largely based on the reprocessing of knowledge, understanding and possibly emotions that we already possess" (Moon, 2005). According to Moon (2005), reflection as it shown above is a form of mental processing and I agree with her. As for the use of reflection in the course H808 it is associated with diaries, learning logs, blogs and portfolios. It aims to students' capacity to assess and transform their e-learning context, through reflection in their practice (H808 Course Guide, 2009).
Usually, we are reflecting on difficult things, things that have a specific goal and we want to meet this goal. It's not easy to reflect, it's not a simple addition, or subtraction or any maths problem, it's more than that. In a reflection we put ourselves, our thoughts, experiences, emotions, knowledge (that later can be generated and become new one), ideas, and theory. This is reflection for me, to be able to express your thoughts, feelings, ideas, theories etc in a blog. This is in fact very useful for reflection. Blogging is one of the most important key to reflection as this is a platform used to deposit your reflections and in the blog you are able to communicate, share ideas, comment, add valuable stuff for you and interact with other people from the world. Generally, reflection is a must for us in order to be self-improved, to develop our critical thinking, decision making and academic or non-academic learning.
Metacognition, as also is suggested in Moons' (2005) article, is an important result of reflection, because it helps the learner to consider his/her own learning behaviour which is associated with effective learning. Furthermore, whether the reflection should be assessed or not is a matter for debate.
Despite the fact that, Moons' (2005) opinion matches with the H808 Course Guide (2009), as far as the tools used in a curriculum like journals, logs, portfolios as mentioned above too, the assessment of reflection is still a matter for discussion. In a reflective document the learner puts himself/herself, sometimes with non-formal language and describes, concludes or discuss, exchange ideas and share thought with their peers for themselves. Whereas, in education, this might be quite different because this work in a way has to be assessed.
In my opinion, this is good since by assessing the learning journals as Creme (2005) suggests, formally would demonstrate that the academy recognises and values this different way of constructing and writing knowledge in its students. According to Creme (2005) again the assessment may undermine the very qualities that we value in the journal. Some issues should be taken into account if the reflection will be assessed, like the provision of some good examples to the learners on reflective writing, discrimination between the ability of the students to reflect or the product of the reflection, what is the purpose of reflection, the role of it in the curriculum and inform the learners on how their reflective writing will be assessed (criteria of assessment).
References:
Crème, P. (2005) 'Should student learning journals be assessed?', Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 287-96. Available from:http://www.informaworld.com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/smpp/section?content=a713605501&fulltext=713240928 (accessed 3 August 2009).
H808, Course Guide, (2009). Available from http://learn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=198871&direct=1
Moon, J. (2005) 'Guide for busy academics no. 4: learning through reflection' (online), The Higher Education Academy. Available from:http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id69_guide_for_busy_academics_no4.doc(accessed 2 July 2008).