#EXPS 407 REFLECTIONS MPORTFOLIO ARCHIVE#
#EXPS 407 REFLECTIONS MPORTFOLIO PROFESSIONAL#

Whereas traditional academic projects expect students to be objective and impersonal, a Reflective Portfolio asks students to highlight their own personal perspectives, opinions and feelings. The reflective portfolio is very different from traditional assignments because it allows students to explore their own learning process. How Is a Reflective Portfolio Different from Other Types of Academic Assignment?

#EXPS 407 REFLECTIONS MPORTFOLIO ARCHIVE#

The portfolio itself can take many forms, including an extended written piece, a notebook or binder of short writings and documentary evidence, or an online archive of such pieces. It is used to assess the student’s engagement with their fieldwork, and their ability to use theoretical knowledge in an applied setting. What Is a Reflective Portfolio?Ī Reflective Portfolio is a set of writings that summarise the insights and experiences a student has gained from practical assignments. Students are often confused about the requirements and expectations for Reflective Portfolios, but this summary will help you understand what’s involved. Reflective Portfolios are becoming a common part of assessments, especially in practical subjects like Education, Medicine, Business, and the Arts.

#EXPS 407 REFLECTIONS MPORTFOLIO PROFESSIONAL#

I am more apt now to spend more time looking deeply into the causes for gaps between optimals and actuals before acting solely on what my gut tells me.Increasingly, students in the UK are being encouraged to demonstrate reflective practice as part of continuing professional development. I'm glad I found this out early in my graduate school career, as I have used analysis many times since this initial project to determine if a solution I might have recommended in the past would even address the true problems. What I Learned About Myself in Educational TechnologyĪs I mentioned earlier, this experience enabled me to discover the value of analysis. Once I realized that my students struggled while using the materials I had already provided, and that my explanations during class were not enough to help them truly understand what to do, I could objectively look at my materials and my past instruction and find ways to improve them. Once I allowed myself to consider what the students were telling me through the survey, and I could believe that my initial ideas were off the mark, I quickly began coming up with new ideas that would address the true underlying problem. It's rare that we ever really know the solution before analyzing the problem objectively. I learned, in my first project for my first class, that educational technology involves conducting analyses and then acting on what the analyses tell us. Once I got over my surprise at having completely missed what should have been obvious, I reset my thinking and decided to let my analysis guide my decisions. Not only had I missed a crucial obstacle my students faced, the solution I had in mind would be more work for them to use than it would be worth. But right there in the first semester of graduate school, I was put in my place. Since I planned to use this analysis to guide my creation of a job aid later in the course, this really altered the direction of my efforts.Īfter doing this same project with my students for several years, I thought I already knew it so well that I had begun planning the job aid I would create. As a result, I learned which specific types of sources were hardest for the students to locate, and I got confirmation that locating the different types of research sources was harder for the students than citing them. I created a survey using a Google Form and had all of my 130 middle school students respond.

However, when early indications seemed to point to locating sources to use for the project as being a major hurdle for them, I immediately needed to change my approach. I expected to hear that they had trouble with creating the citations and documents. I began by informally interviewing twelve of my students who had finished the project early. Standard - Cognitive: Analyze, synthesize, use inductive and deductive reasoning, solve problems effectively and creatively.

I knew my students had difficulty citing sources and correctly formatting a Works Cited, but what I learned during my analysis was that simply locating the sources was the hardest part for most of the students.

My middle school students were engaged in a 'Works Cited Scavenger Hunt' project, which many of them struggle to complete flawlessly, so I chose to approach this problem to see if I could get some ideas to a solution. Cognitive: Performance Analysis (EDTEC 540, individual project)ĭuring our very first course in the Masters program, Introduction to Educational Technology, we learned the performance analysis process by coming up with a scenario of our own to analyze.

Exps 407 reflections mportfolio