REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN PROGRESS I: DESIGNING AN ALTERNATIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AT UNIVERSITY LEVEL

In our days the immediacy inherent to all social networking such as Facebook, twitter or whatsApp prevents, especially the young people, from going deeper in any thought or communication with the others. As a contrast to this fact a group of teachers of different subjects of the University of Alcalá have implemented a teaching strategy in which the main objective is the reflection. What is the reflection in the teaching practice? And in the learning practice? The reflection acquires high importance as an essential tool for the university students in order to develop aspects such as autonomous work, critical and analytical mind, integration of theory and practice or ability to apply their knowledge to the real life or to the professional world. Our teaching innovation group started some years ago with the introduction of an exercise of reflection to improve our professional practice through the called Weekly Reflection Papers (WRP) later modified as Guided Weekly Reflection Papers (GWRP). The implemented strategy represents an excellent vehicle to allow us to explore and analyze the learning process. In this communication we firstly examine the tool we have been currently using with which we have driven to the students to introduce them in a reflective process. Compared to our former action, this last year we have put more emphasis in the way the students have to reflect. On the other hand we describe the design of new tools in order to increase the reflective ability of the students.