Providing opportunities for dialogue and reflection

How do you stimulate reflection?

Whenever you give students the space and opportunity to ponder about what they are learning you are stimulating reflection. Continuing to present new content without stopping to ask learners to think about and apply what they are learning can kill reflection. Learning without reflection is rote learning--learning for the short term, or for memorization of facts and details rather than deeper understanding and lasting utility.

Learners need challenges along the way that can tell them whether they are learning sufficiently. These challenges can take many forms, and Moodle provides ample tools to create them. Reflection is stimulated by any challenging practice activity such as Quizzes, exercises, and assignments (see Unit 4, Design opportunities for practice), but also by more explicit self-reflective activities like writing a personal Blog, responding to a Questionnaire, Survey, or Feedback activity (see Unit 6, Evaluation). Involving learners in self- and peer-assessment (see Unit 5, Design assessment), can be an especially powerful tool for encouraging reflection. 

Collaborative work with teams of learners can be another great way to stimulate both dialogue and reflection. This can be done within Moodle, but is often done using other collaborative tools, such as Google Drive documents, or many other creative collaborative tools available freely online. These can be linked from Moodle Pages to keep them a part of the course. 

But of course, discussion forums, the primary topic of this unit, are the most common activities for reflection by learners. Discussion are particularly good at encouraging reflection when they are free and open to the input of all learners, initiated with reflection in mind, and well-facilitated.