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Exploring evidence of reflective thinking in student artifacts of blogging-mapping tool: a design-based research approach

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Abstract

Reflective learning can assist a learner’s purposeful and conscious manipulation of ideas toward meaningful learning and knowledge integration. Blogs have been used to support reflection, but Blogs usually do not provide overt mechanisms for students to make connections between different parts of an experience, which is integral to reflective activity. A blogging-mapping tool was designed to support the reflective learning process. The tool allowed students to write blog posts, attach up to five keywords to each post, and link the keywords on a concept map. This study aimed to seek patterns of participants’ use of the tool, including evidence of reflective learning, identified as integration between concept maps and blogs. Nine graduate students participated in the study for a semester. Data analysis included examining concept maps for knowledge integration over time. Participants’ various mapping activities implied different levels of thinking. Some participants’ final concept maps showed signs that they tried to integrate knowledge around the content area. Yet, the inconsistent and inconclusive patterns of participants’ concept mapping activities signaled that more strategies were needed to sustain their commitment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lewis University, One University Parkway, Unit 300, Romeoville, IL, 60446, USA

    Ying Xie

  2. Penn State University, 314 C Keller Building, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Priya Sharma

Authors
  1. Ying Xie
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  2. Priya Sharma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ying Xie.

Appendix A: Weblog writing aid

Appendix A: Weblog writing aid

Weblog weekly posts

General schedule

From this week on until November 28, 2006, you should write at least one blog per week (8 weeks all together) (and more if you’d like to) to reflect on your practical experiences of design and to integrate those experiences with ID theory and perspectives. Refer to the following table for suggested topics and keywords of each week. You can choose one or more of the topics each week (and add more if you need to) keeping in mind that you are trying to contribute to the framing of your final paper. You can use the listed keywords or create keywords by yourself. The purpose of the keywords is to categorize the type of information presented in the weblog… or in other words to differentiate the key theoretical/practical concepts that you are integrating in your reflections. For example, you might talk about learning theories, or philosophies and might further differentiate them as constructivism or behaviorism, etc., I think this will help greatly as you organize your paper at the end. If you have already posted, I suggest you go back and try to assign keywords.

Components

As you write your blogs, please keep in mind that you are trying to present a reasoned reflection—that is, you will try to integrate your experiences and reflections with those of other theorists and/or designers. You may integrate as many outside resources as you’d like, and we would recommend integrating resources from the web, including using comments of your classmates and peers as ways to support or provide a different perspective from your thinking. You may include for example:

  • Your experiences and reflection in the class project as an instructional designer

  • Web resources, excerpts from journals/books, or any reading in or out of class and how they shaped your thinking and practice

  • Conversations or interactions that impacted your thinking and practice about instructional design

  • Research, theory, or practical experiences of other designers and academics that support your own thoughts

  • Research, theory, or practical experiences of other designers an academics that provide perspectives different from your own thoughts

Concept mapping

After writing each blog, you may want to reorganize your concept map. If you do not wish to do it that often, you should do it at least once for every 3 weeks of blogging. The concept map is a way to organize and rearrange your thoughts about how the different things you are talking about are related. For example, you might find that a few posts/keywords are associated completely with practice, while others are associated with theory. It is likely that your grouping will become more refined as time goes by and you add more posts and keywords.

Week

Possible topics

Date

Suggested keywords

1

 

9/5

 

2

 

9/12

 

3

What are your initial perspectives about instructional design?

9/19

N/A

4

What is your philosophy of learning and what’s its relationship to instructional design?

9/26

N/A

5

N/A

10/3

 

6

Training or instruction can’t be the solution for all problematic situations. What other possible solutions are there? If your client has predetermined an instructional need, what should you do and how?

Now you’ve learned how to write learning objectives. What do you think of it and why? Constructivists allow different learners to have their own learning goals. Does this notion conflict with the way learning objectives are developed and used?

10/10

Needs assessment

Stakeholder

Learner characteristics

Learning environment

Motivation

Learning goal

Heuristics

(add as needed)

7

By now, your group should have finished task analysis for your project. What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them? How would you describe this task analysis process and why? What could you or your team members do to improve the quality of your work?

What do you believe are the most important roles of the designer at this stage? What skills did you find most necessary in moving through this process?

10/17

(re-organize your map)

Subject matter

Learning

Outcome

Taxonomy

Learning objectives

Assessment

8

In the second week weblog, you should have identified your philosophy of learning. How do you reconcile your philosophy with the types of instructional strategies that might be used in any instructional context? Based on your philosophy, what instructional strategies will you use to teach knowledge, concepts, principles, and problem-solving?

You and your team members are developing instruction for the class project now. What issued did you have when designing the instruction since you might not be very familiar with the subject matter? How did you obtain information from SME? What can you do to improve the interaction?

10/24

Instructional strategies

Project-based learning

Problem-based learning

Discovery learning

Assessment

(add as needed)

9

In the second (and last) week weblog, you should have identified your philosophy of learning. Given you are a behaviorist, cognitivist, constructivist, or pragmatist, what instructional strategies will you use to teach procedure, motivation, and psychomotor skills?

As you designed instruction, do you think you were “selecting” instructional strategies or “cultivating” a climate conducive to learning? It was said that “designers create or adapt an instructional strategy rather than ‘selecting’ one.” What do you think and why? What is the relationship between the front-end analysis and instructional strategy selection/adaptation?

10/31

Transfer of learning

Motivation

Self-efficacy

Authentic learning environment

(add as needed)

10

Some other universities call programs similar to “INSYS” “educational technology” or “instructional technology.” What do you think they mean by technology? What do you think is the role of technology in all learning situations? Be sure to define what you mean by technology as you write about this topic.

What are the issues you should consider when selecting media? What practical constraints did you encounter in your project? How did you overcome them?

What qualifications/skills should an instructional designer have to make decisions about media? Or do you think that media decisions should be guided by philosophies?

11/7

(re-organize your map)

Multimedia

Web-based technology

Distance learning

(add as needed)

11

What strategies are you going to use to implement a new instruction that might be completely different from the existing one? What will you do to gain support from all stakeholders?

What do believe is most important in assuring good implementation of instruction? What do you believe is the role of the designer in assuring effective implementation and at what point does the designer’s responsibility end?

11/14

Value-ladenness

Innovation

Diffusion

Stakeholder

(add as needed)

12

By now, you should have finished your needs assessment, task analysis, and instructional design document, did you or any of your group member use any project management skills and how? What do you think is the role of project management skills for an instructional designer?

During your project development, what unexpected or unanticipated events did you encounter? These events might be project or personnel related. How did they impact your design and team processes and why?

11/21

Risk management

Team effectiveness

Negotiation

(add as needed)

13

What do you see as the role of instructional design now and what do you foresee as its future role? Why? Should instructional design be its own field of study or should it be combined with others? Why?

11/28

(re-organize your map)

N/A

 

——End of Weblog Assignment——

  

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Xie, Y., Sharma, P. Exploring evidence of reflective thinking in student artifacts of blogging-mapping tool: a design-based research approach. Instr Sci 39, 695–719 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-010-9149-y

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