Student Reflection: An ‘ideal world’?

There is a growing body of research that supports what many tutors have felt is an important way of learning, namely learning by doing. In geography, and other environmentally focused subjects, the role of practical and field work is often cited as a key factor in the undergraduate learning experience, and something that facilitates understanding. However, the link between this ‘doing’ and ‘understanding’, is reflection (Kolb, �984; Hinett, 2004). This paper documents an action research project that attempted to introduce formal reflection into the curriculum of a cohort of geography students at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NIUM). Tutors at NUIM had identified two major questions about the learning experience that they wished to investigate. The first was to evaluate one method of enhancing the transfer of learning between year two (level two modules) and those in year three (level three modules). At the start of the study, this transfer was deemed to be poor, and was creating issues when students reached higher levels of study, and attempted to construct curriculum vitae for life after university. The second question was the desire to investigate the effectiveness of encouraging student reflection, and to assess the degree to which IT would facilitate this process. The present report provides an overview of the process of reflection and its likely part in the learning process, followed by a description of the project process and an evaluation of its outcomes. Finally, consideration is given to future developments in relation both to encouraging reflection and in the use of IT for this purpose. The modules which form the focus for the project were co-ordinated by one of the authors, while the other acted primarily to evaluate the experienc