Reflective practice is essential for continuous improvement in learning design. This article explores the importance of incorporating structured reflection into project scopes to evaluate the impact of our efforts to inform future practice.
We deem someone an expert when they can apply an extensive range of experiences and knowledge from their schemata to new contexts with consummate ease. As a Learning Designer (LD), the ‘extensive range’ is characterised by theoretical pedagogical understanding as well as the multiple learnings gained by working with courses and academics across broad discipline areas. But how certain can the Learning Designer be in knowing that what they have designed has contributed effectively to the learning outcomes? After all, the students will not likely engage with the designs for some time, and by the time they do, the Learning Designer will be busy working on another course.
The answer lies in explicitly embedding time to reflect on a previous project into the scope of a current project.
The Importance of Reflective Practice
- Learning from Experience: Reflective practice enables us to learn from our experiences, both successes and challenges. By systematically examining what worked well and what did not, we can identify best practices and areas for improvement. This learning process is crucial for professional growth and the advancement of our field.
- Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Embedding reflective practice into project scopes fosters a culture of continuous improvement within learning design teams. It encourages a mindset of curiosity and critical thinking, where team members are motivated to seek out new knowledge and refine their skills. This culture not only enhances the quality of our work but also contributes to a more dynamic and innovative team environment.
- Sharing is Caring: Creating a platform or central space of reflections allows designers to upload their insights into effective practice. This greatly expands the repository of reflections from the personal to the wider team and creates a rich archive of pedagogical approaches that the viewer can use to evaluate suitability to their contexts. It also contributes to institutional knowledge and can be shared at conferences or published in educational journals, all enhancing the broader discourse on learning design.
Implementing Reflective Practice
- Scoping the Reflection Opportunities: Once a project is underway, it is extremely difficult to find and justify the time needed to work on something extra, but if the reflection time is factored into the scope of work at the beginning of a project, then it is achievable. This of course requires a Unit Director and/or Project Manager to buy into the concept of reflective practice and provision the time into a scope. Towards the end of a 6-week development block, I ask my team to reflect on a previous course they worked with, and they are allocated half a day to do this. It is also feasible that the LD incorporates the reflective practice into the time allocated to Professional Development.
- Data Collection and Analysis: The most useful data will come from surveys and feedback from students and academic staff. The amount of time you have to design the questions, organise where and when students will respond to them and write up your findings will need to be factored into the scope. Also of great importance is the design of the survey questions to suit particular contexts – seeking feedback about an assessment for example will be different from seeking feedback based on engagement in an activity. The underlying purpose of the questions should be to ascertain the student experience of the design you have implemented. Brookfield’s (1995) second lens of critical reflection may be useful in guiding the design of survey questions in that it will make you focus on how the design has impacted the learning of the content it supports. Also important in the design is how long it will take a student to complete it; too long and you won’t get engagement, too short and you compromise validity. Over time, however, you will get better at designing questions and be able to reuse or tweak questions to suit the context you are evaluating.
- Documenting Reflections: Writing up a reflection is a skill in itself, and creating templates for doing so will help team members get the most out of the reflection. This is when reflection frameworks such as Kolb’s (1984) and Gibb’s (1988) may be useful in teasing out answers about what was hoped for in the design compared to what eventuated. Adhering to Kolb’s ‘Abstract conceptualisation’ stage for example forces you to analyse the survey data in the light of creating solutions to address any shortcomings or ways to make further enhancements. Adding the findings to the shared platform then allows other team members to expand their knowledge base of effective teaching and learning strategies by proxy, facilitating an immediate jump to Kolb’s ‘Active experimentation’ stage, and moving them closer to expertise.
Conclusion:
Embedding reflective practice into learning design projects is essential for continuous improvement and professional growth. By taking the time to systematically evaluate the impact of our work, we can learn from our experiences and enhance the effectiveness of our designs. This practice truly allows a Learning Designer to trust that a strategy they endorse is backed not only by theoretical evidence but also by contextualised evidence. However, the time and space needed to do so must be factored into a project’s scope of work. When we do this, we not only prevent designers from being overwhelmed with extra workload, but we encourage a habitual culture of effective practice.
References
Brookfield, S (1995). Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher. San-Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Gibbs G (1988). Learning by Doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Further Education Unit. Oxford Polytechnic: Oxford.
Kolb, D.A. (1984). Experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
I’m Paul Moss. I’m a learning designer at the University of Adelaide. Follow me on Twitter @edmerger or on LinkedIn
LEARNING DESIGN by Paul G Moss 