Abstract:

The qualitative shift in higher education is a shift from teacher-centered learning, where knowledge is transferred from teachers to students, to learner-centered learning, where knowledge is constructed by personal or social activities. E-portfolios, rubrics and similar tools are effective to lead to students’ active learning in the learner-centered education [1, 2]. Barrett says that the essence of e-portfolio learning is reflection [3]. However, it is extremely difficult to give instructions for reflection all at once, because it is necessary to repeatedly reflect on the learning experience along various axes such as time, knowledge, and learning goals.

One co-author and I were in charge of a course in which students created their own e-portfolios. Our course “Portfolio Practice I,” for online graduate students [4], was employed in this research. This course was a year-round and consists of two blocks. In each block, learners submitted a study plan at the beginning, submitted three regular reflections, and completed an assignment as a summative assessment at the end. We showed a sample case which the students reflect on their learnings against competencies, which was defined for learners in our master program. The sample case served as a way for learners to reflect on the competencies and their accomplishments, and to assess their achievement of the competencies by their own. After the learners submitted their reflections, they received feedback from the teacher. In order to move on to higher order reflections, learners should ideally get feedback frequently and adaptively. Therefore, we need a system that allows learners to submit their reflections at any time and receive feedback automatically. One of our future goals is to develop a system that automatically assesses learners' reflections and provides immediate feedback to learners.

In order to construct a system to assess the learners’ reflections and give the feedback automatically, there were two key research questions in this study:
Research Question 1: What higher-order reflections do learners perform in our course?
Research Question 2: What feedback do learners need to move from lower- to higher-order reflections?

Besides providing the regular feedback on our course “Portfolio Practice I”, one co-author and I assessed the learners’ reflections and created the feedback along a new assessment sheet. To assess the reflections, we created an assessment sheet with criteria based on “A Taxonomy of Reflection: A Model for Critical Thinking” by James Pappas [6]. His reflection model is based on Bloom’s approach, including reflection levels paralleling Bloom’s taxonomy, and provides sample questions as learners move from lower- to higher-order reflection. Our assessment sheet had 10 sentences to assess the learners' reflections. Using the assessment sheet, we assessed the reflections on the course from Apr. 2019 to Mar. 2020 by two-point scale, whether the submitted reflection satisfied each sentence in the assessment sheet or not. Thus, we created feedback as learners move from lower- to higher-order reflection on a basis of the reflection model.

We described the creation of the assessment sheet, which created for assessing the learner’s reflections, and the result of our assessments and feedback as learners move from lower- to higher-order reflection on a basis of the reflection model.

Keywords:

Reflection, adaptive feedback, e-portfolio.