Author
Emily Boles
Publish Date

At the start of term, we spend a lot of energy planning the first interactions of a course and setting our students up for successful learning – introductions, building community, and understanding outcomes and expectations. Our choices at the end of the term are just as important. Summarizing, reflection, and making connections to the bigger picture are critical for long-term transfer of learning, or applying learning from one situation to a completely different context.  

Reflective activities are also an important aspect of culturally responsive teaching. Rhodes and Schmidt (2018), provide a Motivational Framework of Culturally Responsive Teaching with four elements to consider as you develop activities for your courses. 

Below, you’ll find strategies to encourage long-term transfer of learning for your students. Consider trying out one strategy this spring term! 

Summarizing Key Points

  • Record a reflection video for your course. You could discuss what you see as the key takeaways for the term. Another approach would be to do a walk through of the syllabus and reflect on how they built knowledge and skills in the subject area over time. Connect the skills to their future work. 
  • Course concept maps. Ask students to create a concept map that represents their learning for the term. To extend this activity to “connecting to the big picture,” ask students to connect each concept to different areas where the concepts may be applicable. 

Reflecting

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” 

– John Dewey (1933)

Reflection, or metacognition, is the ability to “understand and monitor one’s own thoughts and the assumptions and implication of one’s activities” (Lin 2001, 23). John Dewey introduced the idea of reflection to the field of education in 1933. Dewey focused on reflection as the key component of experiential learning, stating, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” Students need to actively reflect on their experiences in order to create meaning and grow. Brock University’s Role of Reflection page contains excellent summaries of frameworks for reflection as well domains for reflection. Several ideas are presented in the open textbook Reflecting with a Purpose (2021). 

  • What? So what? Now what? This three part reflection activity asks students to reflect, assess value, and look to the future. This activity could be a small debrief after an activity or about the entire course. 
  • Create a meme and reflect. Ask students to create a meme that represents an aspect of their learning in a course. Have them post their meme along with a short explanation to a discussion and respond to a peer. Creating memes can be a fun activity for a class, and it is also a great opportunity to include a lesson on digital Blackface to help raise student awareness of racist stereotypes in social media. 
  • Letter to a future student. Have current students write advice to future students. Learn more from Babino and Riley’s article in The Scholarly Teacher. 
  • Journaling. Building a reflective practice into your course will help your students develop metacognitive skills. Harmonize discussions in Canvas can be set up between individual students and instructors to allow an easy journaling format. Requiring a weekly or bi-weekly journal entry entry can open dialogue between instructors and students. Be sure to provide optional prompts for students who are uncomfortable with reflection. 
    • Did students have conceptions that changed?
    • How can their learning be applied in their lives?
    • What new questions do they have in the subject matter or discipline? 

Connecting to the Big Picture

  • 5 big ideas. Have students post their suggestions of the five big ideas in the course and post them to a group discussion board. Ask the groups to work together to come to a consensus and post their work on a Canvas page to share their ideas. Base a class discussion on the compiled page. Ask each student to reflect on what surprised them or interested them. Adapted from O’Hara at UC Berkeley. 
  • Video wrap-up. Ask students to record a video that reflects their learning for the term and connects it to their future goals or other situations they are facing. They can use a cell phone, Kaltura Media screen capture (from UIS and available through Canvas), or other tools to record their ideas. Give them a few options to reflect on, such as: 
    • What is the most significant or surprising thing you learned?
    • How has your understanding grown or changed over the course of the semester? 
    • Which readings, topics, or activities were most helpful? How so?
    • To what extent have you met the course outcomes? 
    • What did you hope to learn in this course? Did you meet your learning goals?

Resources

References

Dewey, J. (1933). How we think: A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the education process. Boston, MA: D. C. Heath.

Lin, X. (2001). “Designing metacognitive activities.” Educational technology research and development, 49(2): 23-39.

Rhodes, Christy & Schmidt, Steven. (2018). Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Online Classroom. eLearn, November 2018.