Reflective Journal Writing
‘In school, we think about math, and we think about spelling, and we think about grammar. But who ever heard of thinking about thinking? … If we think about electricity, we can understand it better, but when we think about thinking, we seem to understand ourselves better.” Harry Stottlemeier (Lipman, 1982, p. 17).
The purpose of reflective journal writing during the vertically integrated team design project (VITDP) and the course Project Management and Teamwork is to help you become aware of the way you learn and to develop necessary skills for life long learning. Learners “pull from previous experiences, apply this knowledge to new experiences … juxtapose old and new experiences, and then construct or reconstruct a personal understanding” (Blake & Blake, 2000, p.831). The reflective journal is a means for you as a learner to gain knowledge of and become aware of your own thinking processes and therefore have the ability to actively control and manage these processes (Flavell, 1976). Selfe and Arbabi (1983) found that “students clarify their thoughts, work out strategies for solving engineering problems, understand the important aspects of courses and identify areas in which they need more help” (p.87) through the use of journals. Your reflections can take many different forms. Free-writes, bulletized lists, flow charts, fish-bone diagrams, etc. are all valid ways to express your thoughts. Over the next three weeks (August 28 – September 11, 2003) in the VITDP and Project Management and Teamwork class we would like you to use a free-write style. In a free-writing exercise, the writer chooses a topic (e.g., teamwork) or question (e.g., what did I learn about teamwork last week ?) and spends 5 – 10 minutes writing down whatever comes to mind. The writer should not worry about spelling, grammar, organization, or penmanship. The point is to get your thoughts down on paper. Assignment For the next three class meetings your free writes will be due on Friday at 5 pm. Please respond to the following prompts/questions for the week listed: o Week 1 (due Aug 29, 2003): What is required to have a successful team project ? o Week 2 (due Sept. 5, 2003): What can you learn about teamwork through the VITDP ? o Week 3 (due Sept 12, 2003): How can you help create an effective meeting ? o Week 4 (due Sept. 19, 2003): How does a design team use a workplan ? Please submit your free-write journal response to slb32@uakron.edu When submitting your second, third, and fourth entries, please include the prior entries.
References Blake, R. W., & Blake, R. W. (2000). Science as a way of knowing: Using reader response as a means to construct a personal understanding of science literature. In Rubba, P. A., Rye, J. A., Keig, P. F., Di Biase, W. J., (Eds.). Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Education of Teachers in Science (Akron, OH, January 6-9, 2000). p. 831 – 844. ERIC Number: ED438191. Flavell, J. H. (1976). Metacognitive aspects of problem solving. In Resnick, L. B. (Ed.). The nature of intelligence. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Selfe, C. L. & Arbabi, F. (1983). Writing to learn: Engineering student journals. Engineering Education, 74(2), p. 86-90. .