ISYS225 ( System analysis and design )

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Reflective Learning Journal Student Guide

What is a Reflective Learning Journal?

It is a piece of writing which allows students to record thoughts and insights about their own

learning experience. It encourages students to review and consolidate learning, to evaluate

performance, to plan future learning based on past learning experience. In such a way, students

become capable to take charge of their own learning, and eventually to develop into

independent life long learners.

The term “Reflection” has been used widely and colloquially in academic disciplines, such as

psychology and education. Nevertheless, in both settings, it simply means the process of

thinking deeply with one’s awareness and conscious effort on an issue or event. The product

of such a highly engaged cognitive process would be informing insights, strategies, plans and

predictions on the issue one vigorously ponders upon.

Psychologist and educators further differentiate two kinds of reflective thinking: reflection-in-

action and reflection-on-action. The former suggests a simultaneous monitoring when

performing or practicing a task; the latter suggests a retrospective evaluation after the task is

accomplished.

The meaning of the word “reflection” means writing something that becomes very meaningful

and fruitful in the process of learning, which is one of the reasons why the use of Reflective

Learning Journal in teaching has a long history. Reflective learning journal is well-accepted

by many educators in higher education because it helps students to narrow the gaps between

theory and practice, and most importantly heightens students’ felt need of constantly

monitoring their learning progress. Learning should not be a passive process of simply in-

taking information from tutors and lecturers, but rather an active process that requires

a lot of personal thinking and questioning.

By engaging in reflective journal writing regularly, you will find in it a personal space for you

to keep records of your own ideas and thoughts, and these thoughts are then useful for

yourselves to come up with solutions and novel approaches to get around problems encountered

in the course of your learning.

Positive outcomes expected

✓ Students can gain a clearer overview of their learning progress ✓ Students can gain an insight of their own strengths and weaknesses as a learner ✓ Students can realize and recognise learning strategies which suit their personal needs ✓ Students will become more capable in planning for overcoming learning difficulties ✓ Students will understand and appreciate the importance self-evaluation in the role of

improving oneself; and importantly

✓ Reflective learners are more likely to develop a deeper understanding of their subject and to achieve higher grades as a result.

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Designing a Reflective Learning Journal

The structure of reflective learning journal

A journal can be structured with guiding questions (see the Prompt Questions Bank) or

unstructured, in which students are asked to write about anything related to the assessment

item or to their learning. An over-structured journal prevents reflective thinking, while an

overly unstructured one might not encourage reflection to be made either.

This type of reflective journal is characterised by little prompting questions,

which give students the greatest freedom to ponder upon things that had the

greatest personal significance to them. This regular writing exercise helps

students to organise their thoughts, reflect on their work, identify problems, and

find solution to them independently.

However, students often feel confused and uncertain about what to write in this

highly unstructured piece of writing. Therefore, we give simple instructions and

jump-start questions to give students a lift, but these questions do not

necessarily confine the structure or intrude the personal quality of students’

writing. See the following template:

Notes:

 This piece of writing should be highly unstructured,

therefore it’s important that

the guiding questions

provided should be very

open-ended, so that allow

students to carry deep

thinking on course-related

issues

 Only a few guided questions will do, otherwise, students

will be overwhelmed and

divert all their energy in

attempting all the questions

(which is not required)

instead of taking a quality

reflection on their learning

Writing your Reflective Learning Journal

This course composes of different teaching and learning

activities, such as lecture, workshop, discussion, take-home

case study assignment, reflective journal, and a final open- book exam.

In each journal entry, you might therefore want to write down

your reaction, comment, personal feelings, and suggestions to

the journaling activities. For example, you can start by

thinking:

 What’s my interest in the free trial ITSM software

chosen, and why did I choose it?

 What’s my reaction to a particular topic covered in a

lecture or workshop activity?

 How do I feel when confronted about undertaking an analysis of ITSM practice, reading a number of articles,

and having to synthesise and make sense of them all?

 How can I relate other things directly or indirectly to

things that I have learnt in this course and to my

assignment report?

 How do I get motivated and interested in writing 1-2,000

words when I am already time-poor, and this task is so

new to me?

Unstructured reflective learning journal

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The Prompt Question Bank

Facilitating reflective thinking

Students often get lost and frustrated when asked to write a reflective journal, and simply resort

to writing a diary of events or document hours spent studying, for example. Students complain

a lot and cry-out for guidelines to help them write a good reflective journal.

To facilitate students’ reflective thinking I have included prompting questions in this Guide.

This Prompt Questions Bank is a collection of questions for this purpose.

Focus of reflection

In the Prompt Questions Bank, I provide two sets of foci: one explores the learning experience

itself, the other thinks about the learning experience in relation to one’s academic,

professional and personal development.

The first set “Explore a learning experience” deals with the specific and the immediate. This

helps improve your performance. The foci of reflection are:

▪ Content - the ‘what’s of the learning experience ▪ Process - the ‘how’s of the learning experience ▪ Reasons - the ‘why’s of the learning experience

The second set concerns long-term issues and widening the perspective of students, helping

you see the relevance of and appreciate what you are learning. Think of a learning experience

in relation to your:

▪ Academic development ▪ Job ready and professional development ▪ Personal development

To do: After each reading and writing exercise for your weekly workshop activities or in

completing the CobiT assignment, spend some time considering the Qs in Area 1 and in Area

2 below. You don’t have to write specific answers, but these Qs will prompt you to think

reflectively about your learning activity. Now document your reflection in any way you choose.

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The Prompt Questions Bank (Also known as ‘Reflection Menu’)

Area 1 Explore a learning experience… Awareness Evaluation Regulation

Content (What)

What have I learnt? Do I understand what I have

learnt?

What else do I need to learn?

What can I do in order to

gain a better understanding?

Where can I find more information?

Process (How) How did I learn / do it?

What strategy have I used in

learning this topic?

How effective is this

strategy?

How can I make this

strategy more effective?

Is the way I do it the best

way?

Reasons (why)

Why learn it?

What is learning?

Why would I think so?

Is this the only purpose of

learning?

What would be a more

useful way to understand

learning?

How could this learning experience be interpreted

differently?

Area 2 Think of a learning experience in relation to… Awareness Evaluation Regulation

1. Academic development

How does this learning

experience contribute to my

academic development?

What is/are my short-term /

long-term academic goal(s)?

What does this learning

experience tell about my

choice of academic goal and

path?

Am I making good

progress?

Am I on the right track?

All things considered, is this

goal a suitable goal?

Are there any other options?

What other paths can I take

to achieve my goals?

What obstacles have I

encountered?

What is the source of the

obstacles?

Am I on the right track?

How can I remove those

obstacles?

What other paths can I take

to achieve my goals?

2. Professional development

Same as academic development, just that this time think about the learning experience in

relation to your professional development instead of academic development.

3. Personal development

What does this learning

experience mean to me?

How does it matter to me if

I failed or succeeded?

What does this learning

experience tell me about my

potentials, and myself as a

person?

What do I know about

myself?

How am I living the most of

myself?

Meta-cognitive reflection

The backbone of the Prompt Question Bank is a sequence of metacognitive reflections – the

awareness of one’s learning experience, the evaluation of the experience, and the regulation

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of one’s attitude and behaviour for better performance and more fruitful experience. They are

elements of one’s meta-cognitive abilities that enable one to become a better student and life-

long learner, i.e. to grow, and reflection is the mediating process essential to the development

and operation of these abilities.

1. Awareness of one’s learning experience Awareness of the current state is a necessary prerequisite of any conscious improvement.

Students often do their study without knowing much about their current state of learning (e.g.

how they learn, why they learn, etc). A reflective learning journal is a good place for you to

start noticing your learning experiences.

2. Evaluation of the experience Between being aware of one’s learning experience and taking steps to do better is a stage where

judgements must be made. An evaluation of the current state identifies problems and creates a

felt need for change. It is sometimes useful to provide some criteria for evaluation. For

example, in the prompt question “Do I understand what I have learnt”, understanding is a

criterion for the evaluation, as contrast to memorisation that some students (and junior

lecturers) mistakenly believe is important.

3. Regulation of one’s attitude and behaviour Knowing how one is doing does not lead to improvement unless one is willing to make some

adjustments accordingly. This is where remedies are generated and alternatives considered.

Writing the plans down also helps students commit to doing them. Questions at this stage are

very important as they help students look at the situation in a positive light, rather than leaving

them in despair which the finding out of problems at the evaluation stage has created.

A reflective journal is designed to help you think deeply about your learning, especially on

issues such as: your progress in learning, the difficulties you encountered in the process of

learning, the strategies you have taken to get around those difficulties, and your evaluation of

your own performance.

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General Instructions Quick reference

What learning experience to reflect on?

Your study during the

week The object of reflection for this journal is your experience in

learning during the 8 - 9 weeks writing the assignment report.

Frequency and length expected

Once or

twice a week 100 – 200 words/entry

✓ You are required to make one or two (or more if you like) entries per week, each about 100 to 200 words of length. You

are instructed to make entries regularly rather than leaving it

till before a submission date, and the quality of reflection

should be the emphasis of your entries rather than worrying

about the word count.

✓ The key is authenticity. If your journal isn’t reflective and doesn’t contain a serious or authentic reflection about

completing your Oz S/W Solutions report, then no marks will

be awarded. Remember, reflective learners are more likely to

develop a deeper understanding of their topic and to achieve

higher grades as a result.

Assessment

Check for completion

10% of final grade

Your reflective learning journal of about 1,000 words

accompanies your 4,000 word Oz S/W Solutions report and

contributes to 10% of your final grade for this course. The

criterion for assessment of the reflective journal is the

satisfactory completion of the task, i.e. making regular entries

as required. The focus of this exercise is on authentic

reflection.

Requirement for submission

At the conclusion of

Week 10 included in

your full written report.

See the report template

under the Assessment menu item on l@g.

You need to submit your reflective journal and Oz S/W Solutions

assignment together in one document using the mandated report

template.

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Detail Guidelines This section offers further guidelines to making journal entries that are reflective and

significant to you personally.

What learning experience to reflect on?

Reflect on your process of learning. Record any observations,

experience, thoughts and insights that are significant to you as a

learner, or even as a person.

Prompt questions for your reference:

The function of prompt questions is to stimulate your reflective

thinking. You don’t need to (in fact, you are not supposed to)

answer every one of them in any entry.

▪ How what I have learned relates to my other experiences? ▪ What implications does it have regarding my learning? ▪ What difficulties have I encountered in applying my knowledge

in dealing with everyday situations?

▪ What would be the causes for those difficulties and how could I overcome them?

▪ What have I found today and read about? What does it mean to me? ▪ What do I find difficult in understanding? Why? ▪ What do I find difficult in accepting? Why? ▪ How could it be different?

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Sample entry Here is a sample fictitious entry to a reflective learning journal for the course 2806ICT ITSM

with Dr Bruce’s comments on the right.

The first half of the course introduced the claim that ITSM leads to

improved IT department performance and in turn, increased organisational

performance. At least that is the claim of the proponents of ITSM like the itSMF and the ITIL people. In reference to all the ITIL manuals and the

course textbook, I’ve found myself always reading books passively from

page 1 onwards. When I have to read textbooks or manuals I tend to read the

same way. Some contents of those manuals are quite long and boring. Just now I am studying the ITIL framework and in particular we have been

introduced to the ITIL terminology and ITIL software tools for assignment

ideas. But where do I start? Should I read the whole Introductory Overview of ITIL 2001 manual or the entire Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam from

cover to cover to get more information and concepts about this topic? But I

don’t think it is easy to read. The sentences are long and hard to understand. And those examples are all about organisations. As I know very little about

how organisations operate as I haven’t worked FT in a company yet, let alone

understand issues of ITIL use, or what the heck is the service lifecycle!!! Last

week’s lecture and reading titled BMC Best Practice Insights on ITIL Service Strategy is far-out. I feel spaced-out when I read this stuff, I often cannot get

concise concepts and write a summary.

Bruce recommends us to treat the manuals like the old telephone

books. Use them when you need to, don’t start at page one, but selectively

find pages that relate to the task at hand. I now agree with his tip.

Then today in the ITIL lecture, Bruce introduced the ITIL 5 stages.

Hey, this was easy to understand as it reminded me of the SDLC and each

stage was similar to s/w development. Also ITIL is comprised of lots of manuals and manuals describe processes, just as the CobiT5 manuals do. In

fact, it’s the same format. And when we watched the Utube video I could

understand the restaurant analogy because I have worked in a restaurant before, knew what a matre de does, and could follow the examples. It’s easy

to learn new things when it relates to what I already know.

I also have a question: We spent almost the entire workshop talking about wicked problems, and how to distinguish them from tame problems. Do we

have to know this for the exam, or how can we apply it in the assignment?

I’ve got many difficulties and questions in writing this reflective journal. At first, I think I knew well how to write a journal but later, I don’t

think so. Do I need to write or reflect on everything I read or write? I cannot

apply them so quick and see if they work for me. The content of the lecture on maturity assessment is quite hard for

me to apply in my daily life. I also have a question of what I learnt from last

week’s lecture. At that workshop session, we focused on …………….. I

think these points can be tried only when I read a commentary or article. If I

am reading some storybooks or textbooks, can I still apply them?

Well in the IT industry

manuals are common place. They are a resource. But this

is a reflection about the value

of manuals to professional

development.

Yes, it’s called scaffolding:

learning new content is

easier if it relates to concepts you already know.

This is an example of

reflection.

Here is an example of a problem for a student. Now

reflect on why it is.

This is not a reflection, but

just a thought Q.

Just reflect and write on what

you see as important to you.

Use the prompts to help

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What to write in the Reflective Learning Journal?

Reflective learning journal writing is very different from academic assignments that you have

been writing, such as the Oz S/W Solutions case report. It is a piece of flexible, personal,

informal piece of writing. If you are unsure about how to start, and how to write, don’t just

scribble something in the journal, or write in week 3 “I did this and answered these Qs, and

submitted my report for marking”. Writing something truly “reflective” is the most important

part of the process, see if these tips can give you a lift!

“I don’t know what to write!”

5 tips on what to write in a journal entry:

- Start off with whatever is in your mind about your learning experience in the assignment - Don’t just throw in events in chronological order. This is not a diary. - Describe the meaning of what you learnt in your assignment and in the findings of your

analysis. Also, your reaction, feeling, opinions, views on both the learning process and the

learnt material

- List the good and the bad, strengths and weaknesses you consider you demonstrate in the course of your learning

- Make advice for yourself and make plans for your learning in the near future

“Now I know what to put in the entry, but how

should I write it?”

5 tips on how to write a journal entry:

- Write in first person “I”, as if you are writing a letter to a friend. - There is no right or wrong answer for a journal entry. Bruce bangs on about this point.

Therefore, feel free to express your ideas, opinions, and thoughts

- Don’t hesitate to share your personal experience if that helps to illustrate your point - Don’t limit yourself to words – diagrams and pictures are ok too - Don’t be too intimidated by English rules. It’s okay to make minor grammatical mistakes

initially if that does not interfere with the transmission of ideas. But proof-read and correct

later before submission.

- And don’t worry about referencing in a journal. Woo Hoo.