Thing 8

Most of us would have engaged in some form of informal reflection at some point. Something happened at work and at the end of the day or over the weekend, you go for a long walk to ‘clear your mind’; as you walk you toss things around and wonder whether what you said or did was the right thing, maybe in hindsight you might have done things differently. That’s the beginnings of reflection. However, within a week or two most of us will have forgotten that experience and life moves on. One of the benefits of formalising our reflective practice is that we can learn from our experiences and improve our understanding of situations or events.
Writing our thoughts in a structured format can help the learning process, and there are many models which provide guidance. This six minute video from the University of Hull explains the thought process and provides some tips on the process of reflective writing.

Technology Tools for Reflection

When first engaging with professional reflection, most people start with a simple journal, however, there are a range of digital tools that can be used to support our reflective writing. Depending on the content and context of your reflection, you may want to keep your writing private, or may feel you want to share with one or two trusted people, or the whole world.

Online tools and applications such as Google Docs, Evernote and Padlet provide opportunity to take notes, incorporate images and links, and make voice recordings. Each of these tools can be private or shared. For those in the health professions, the Ausmed app is designed to comply with CPD registration standards, stores copies of certificates, keeps track of CPD hours and includes a reflection tool with questions and prompts.

For those willing to share their reflections openly, blogs are useful, as these offer the opportunity to invite comment from readers, providing further prospects for ongoing reflection and discussion. Stepper (2016) describes Working Out Loud as a ‘personal practice that evolves over time‘, something that appeals to our desires for connection, for learning and purpose. The five elements of relationships, generosity, visible work, purposeful discovery and a growth mindset are explained further in his blog. Vora (2017) writes about International Working Out Loud Week (#wolweek) saying ‘it’s a great way to leverage wisdom of community to improve your own work …’ and includes a visual sketchnote of Stepper’s five elements.

Here an example of professional open reflection may be helpful: Campbell (2017) reflects on the process of achieving professional accreditation in her field of learning technology. Discussing Communication and working with others, she describes the differences between working with colleagues and volunteers, and reflects on how she adapted her communication techniques for different situations.

Sue is also working out loud to develop her CMALT Portfolio including descriptions of her role together with submission of supporting evidence and critical reflection. Note that as a work in progress, some of these reflections are incomplete, and notes include feedback from her mentor which are yet to be incorporated into the text.

Many who are confident in sharing their reflections use social networking sites such as Twitter. As a micro-blogging platform, Twitter captures micro-reflections as they happen and may offer a different perspective to narratives composed after the fact, and may lead to further discussion with peers encouraging deeper reflection. Many a blog post, and indeed some journal articles, originated as tweets.

Tweet by @trishgreenhalgh

Further Reading

For in depth reading with further models and resources, see the excellent Reflectors’ Toolkit developed by The University of Edinburgh and RMIT’s tutorial, Writing an academic reflection.