Reflection for Experiential Learning

Why Reflect on Experiential Learning (EL)?

Reflection is a versatile tool that helps students make the most of EL. By analyzing their experiences and decisions, students can consider how EL has transformed them as critical thinkers and observers, learners in specific disciplines, and/or as individuals training to enter a specific professional field. Reflection helps students develop and apply habits of mind and new skills to future challenges. 

Having students reflect at various stages during EL helps faculty reflect on our practice and our position in relation to students and our relationships with them inside and outside the classroom space. Students’ reflections enable faculty to get to know students in different social, intellectual, and linguistic spaces. 

This knowledge enables faculty to better know how to shape course content and to work with individual students. But reflection also helps students take more active ownership of their learning which motivates them to transfer what they discover through EL to other contexts that are meaningful to them. 

When to Reflect on EL

Reflection can be useful during all stages of experiential learning.

Pre-Reflection

Taking stock of their thinking at the start of a course or before an experience gives students a specific record of their initial perspectives that they can return to develop a clearer, deeper sense of how their thinking and strategies change.

Students can use pre-reflections to:   

• set initial goals for the course and/or experience
• explore how their thinking has already evolved due to relevant prior experiences
• analyze their predictions/preconceptions about what will happen at a site or event or during work with a community partner
• examine their initial feelings about the field or profession they are entering and/or their initial sense of their identity in relation to this field/profession.

Reflecting on Processes in Progress

In the middle of courses, internships, practicums, etc. connections can be drawn between experiences and a range of other elements. 

Students can use reflections midway through experiences to:

• link early experiences to later experiences to consider how their strategies are transforming through EL
• apply theory from assigned materials or background knowledge to experiences
• connect their individual experiences to experiences of classmates or community partners to compare the impacts of shared experiences
• link their fieldwork to literature reviews from a specific discipline
• determine how they will use their experiences in assignments and/or to revise assignments.

Some faculty use this resource from Carnegie Mellon University about grading methods for group work and sample peer/self-assessment rubrics. You can explore many assessment styles in an easy-to-read table format.

Transitions and Transfer

Reflecting on how they can carry strategies into future contexts helps students gain even more long-term benefits from EL. 

Students in Boston University Hub classes and other non-major courses can use reflections to: 

• choose what skills or habits of mind they think will be most helpful to transfer to future contexts relevant to them
• consider how they can apply a specific skill or habit of mind to a specific future context relevant to them  
• look back on observation notes/fieldwork and brainstorm how they can apply sharpened observational skills to future classes or professional contexts
• reflect on how they explored creativity/innovation through EL in this specific course and consider what approaches they can apply to their major classes, internships, or professional contexts 
• analyze how they used critical thinking/problem-solving during specific experiences and consider how they can revise those strategies in future situations
• reflect on how they might revise the steps of their research process in this context to fit their future research
• reflect on how their strengths and the challenges they faced during their research process in this course can shape their future research experiences.

Students in upper-level major courses and pre-professional contexts can use reflections to:

• enhance skills and competencies specific to their field or profession
• analyze types of situations they experienced that are common to specific professional contexts and plan future strategies to use in those contexts
• deepen their evolving professional identities by choosing more specific sub-fields or trajectories on which to focus in the future
• challenge preconceptions and stereotypes that might prevent them from performing their future jobs
• gain clearer understandings of their own positionality in relation to the field or profession they are preparing to enter.

Assessing Reflection

Teachers may choose to assess reflections or not. The types of assessment faculty pursue should be shaped by the specific purposes of reflection in the course. The CTL provides a brief Reflection on Reflections with questions to get started and a document with links to many sample rubrics. 

When offering feedback on reflections, it can be helpful to create an active dialogue by asking questions that will help students think more deeply about specific ideas or experiences they have already addressed, by encouraging them to explore specific further areas in future reflections, and by suggesting new approaches for reflection that students may want to try.   

As you consider what types of responses to reflection might work best for your course, you may find it helpful to check out these resources from J. Elizabeth Clark’s presentation “Reflective Writing for Project-Based Learning” (2022). Her models for assessing reflection offer useful examples for faculty, and this rubric on assessing reflection by Barbara Glesner Fines of Southern Methodist University may also come in handy.