GUIDED WEEKLY REFLECTION PAPERS

Three years ago a group of professors of diverse areas of knowledge at the University of Alcalá, such a Sciences, Pharmacy, Engineering and Music Education, started-up an innovative teaching experience, named “Weekly Reflection Papers”. The experience affords the opportunity to enhance the reflection about our daily teaching practice in order to improve and develop our working methodology. After all, the innovative proposals afford to introduce the students in a process of more active and participative learning, which motivates and encourages them to achieve more significant and reflective knowledge and generates interest in emergent topics.

The experience gained by our team of educational innovation with the implementation of the “Weekly Reflection Papers” has led us to diversify and make more flexible the methodology applied during the past academic year (2010-2011). The aim of this modification has been the development of certain abilities and skills of the students, with particular emphasis on their ability to integrate, review and apply knowledge in a critical and reflective way; the modified tool was called “Guided Weekly Reflection Papers”. The professors guide the student´s work through a series of questions on which the students must apply the most significant concepts studied each week, to prove the acquisition of such aptitudes and skills.

Once the students finished the filling of each “Guided Weekly Reflection Papers”, the professor corrected and returns them in the shortest possible time. Each lecturer monitored the activity by filling in a table in which the number of papers handed in by each student and the corresponding mark are included. On the basis of these data the degree of participation in the activity was analysed statistically, together with its influence on students’ attendance at classes and exams, and its relation to the final marks obtained. Lecturers were gradually able to check the progress in the teaching-learning process and therefore focus it appropriately (“feedback process”) without having to wait until the end of the course.

The team of lecturers engaged in this innovation project insists on the validity of this activity once analysed the results obtained. The conclusions achieved are important for the application of this practice in subsequent courses, improving its implementation with the aim of involving a larger number of students and correcting the aspects that have proved to be less successful.

On the other hand, it is intended to test the effectiveness of this strategy as a continuous and formative method of assessment, as well as its contribution to the integral formation of the students.

In summary, the tool provides a higher engagement of the students with the teaching-learning-process and it gives us the opportunity to improve the quality of the teaching-practice, in spite of the large cost in terms of time and effort required both for professors and students. It has been at the same time used as a good procedure of continuous and formative assessment.