Abstract:

Introduction: Driven by increasingly expanding higher educational environments, technological advances in communication, provincial regulatory expectations of nurses as lifelong agents of reflective practice, cultural diversity of the student population, and limited availability of resources, Schools of Nursing continue to explore new pedagogical approaches to graduate level learning.

Aim: The aim is to describe the pedagogical approach (including educational aids) used to implement online reflective journaling, complementary to our video- and tele-conferenced classroom teaching, in a graduate level nursing theories course.

Methods: Guided by constructivist conceptualization, an online reflective journaling forum was created and implemented with students (n= 15) in three satellite sites in Canada over two successive offerings of the course. Literature searches from 1993 to 2017 were conducted using databases of CINAHL, ERIC, PsycARTICLES, Academic Search Premier, Health Source, Nursing/Academic Edition, PsycINFO, SocINDEX, MedLine, and PubMED. Literature on the benefits, limitations, and pedagogical use of reflection and online discussion forums in higher graduate education and nursing context was reviewed to identify learning outcomes and faculty/student perceptions of reflective journaling. A semi-structured reflective journaling activity within an asynchronous threaded online discussion forum was designed and implemented. Students were oriented to the reflective learning activity through: (a) written description of the purpose, goal, expectations, and evaluative criteria, and (b) in-class opportunity to pilot sample reflective questions. Student satisfaction responses were obtained via semi-structured group discussions.

Findings: Twenty-seven peer reviewed articles from literature review searches were included in the analysis of online reflective journaling. Five learning outcomes of on-line reflective journaling were identified: Professional development, facilitation of life-long learning process, personal growth, empowerment, and positive learning environment. Graduate students described the online reflective journaling approach as effective in facilitating connections to self and others by expanding the dissemination of practice experiences. This served to enhance individual and peer-to-peer learning of major course concepts that inform evolving philosophies of nursing as advanced practice nurses.

Implications: Illuminated by theoretical sampling of the literature, traditional journaling often results in isolated writing and unshared entries. Despite on-line reflective journaling being a common educational method in nursing, journaling has not been used to its fullest potential as a complement to video- and tele-conferenced classroom teaching in higher education. This work demonstrated one of the ways in which the boundaries of on-line reflective journaling can be expanded and used as a transformative tool to empower learners to engage in a deliberate interplay between self and community in which students are invited to imagine, construct, and reconstruct their learning individually and with their peers.

Keywords:

On-line reflective journaling, pedagogical innovation, higher education, video and teleconferenced classroom learning.