4 Oct 2008, 23:03
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From: Jose Martel Penate 4 October 2008 22:50:25
Subject: Re: CA 2.4 Critique of Penn State Advice
To: H808 ac6 UNIT 2
Hi Mitchell,
In reply to your Critique of Penn State Advice (Stan, 2008), both Hurren (2008) and this writer (Martel, 2008) would agree with your affirmation that the Penn State documents (PSU, 2006) leave room for improvement, especially given the target reader, as you point out.
You suggest incorporating "more fully developed samples of ineffective and effective writing", as in Moon 2001. However, in Martel 2008, I question the effectiveness of including too much information. The Advice Penn State offers is already spread across at least 5 pages. I suggest that extending the advice much further - or incorporating much more information - may adversely affect the probability that students will try to fully assimilate that advice. Might not many pages of detailed information and more lengthy extracts of reflective writing simply scare, bore or even confuse these young, inexperienced and possibly unenthusiastic students?
Jose
References
Hurren, C.A. (02 October 2008 22:53:44); "Core activity 2.4: Criteria for reflective writing"; Message to Forum H808 ac6 UNIT 2 (accessed 03 October 2008)
Martel Penate, J (04 October 2008 08:53:30) "CA2.4-Critique Penn State Approach" Message to Forum H808 ac6 UNIT 2 (accessed 05 October 2008)
Moon, J. (2001) ‘PDP working paper 4: reflection in higher education learning’ [online], The Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/id72_Reflection_in_Higher_Education_Learning.rtf (accessed 29 June 2007)
Penn State University (PSU) (2006) REFLECT: providing insight, http://portfolio.psu.edu/reflect (accessed 1 July 2008)
Stan, M. (04 October 2008 18:51:45),CA 2.4 Critique of Penn State Advice", Message to Forum H808 ac6 UNIT 2 (Accessed 05 October 2008)
Mitchell Stan writes:
While the Penn State advice on reflective writing is a workable introduction to the topic, in my view there is room for improvement. Given that the target audience would largely consist of young adults with very little experience in carrying out this type of task, more fully developed samples of ineffective and effective writing would be beneficial. As Moon (2001) points out “not all students find reflection easy” and Appendix 2 of her article is an excellent example of the type of demonstration of reflective writing that would greatly assist students. Linking the reflective writing steps provided by Penn State to the process undertaken to write this type of example would definitely make them more concrete to students.
Reference
Moon, J. (2001) ‘PDP working paper 4: reflection in higher education learning’ [online], The Higher Education Academy. Available from: http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/assets/York/documents/resources/resourcedatabase/
id72_Reflection_in_Higher_Education_Learning.rtf (accessed 29 June 2007).
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