Digital Portfolios: Practising What I Preach

Digital Portfolios: Practising What I Preach

When I first began to ask students to reflect, quite often it would look something like this

         "Okay students, reflect. Here are some questions you can answer, go!"

Quite often I would get answers like

         "I found this assignment difficult because the tools I was using were hard."
or
          "This was an easy assignment because I was good at it."

Obviously this wasn't really the detail I was looking for. I wanted to actually get an idea of what the students found hard, and why they found it difficult, or what skills the students came into the assignment with that they leveraged in order to make it easier for themselves.

The root of the problem was obvious, but I couldn't see it because I was so wrapped up in providing feedback and chasing students around for not completing their work. The issue was I wasn't asking the right questions, or rather the questions I asked were to vague. I had also provided no exemplars for the students, good or bad. What is worse (in my opinion at least) is the students only have a vague idea of why were were reflecting in the first place!

Here is an example that I have found more success with:

   "Okay students, lets reflect! Not so fast, I go first."
*open an assignment*
   "So lets take the high road, lets talk about the successes I found in this assignment, who can give         me some things they see that are good about this assignment"
*students provide me a list of good things*
   "If were were to reflect on what went well in this assignment. What would be the purpose of such a    thing?"
*Students hum, haw, and shift awkwardly. Finally one brave soul shyly puts up a hand*
    "To tell you.... to tell you  what we learned?"
*Balloons fall from the sky, lights flash, a band starts up!*
   "That sounds pretty reasonable, so what kinds of things would a teacher like me be interested in    hearing about"


We then proceed to write a basic reflection on one positive thing together. How I made it, what skills allowed me to make it, how I solved problems I encountered etc.

I then ask the students to take 15 min and write one for their own assignment. After 15 min I come around to each student and provide them with verbal formative feedback.

After doing this four or five times with a class, the quality of  their reflections have improved dramatically. It doesn't work for all students, and it might not work for you, but it works for me :)