Reflective writing can provide a powerful way for students to integrate professional experience and academic learning. However, writing reflectively requires high quality actionable feedback, which is time-consuming to provide at scale. This paper reports progress on the design, implementation, and validation of a Reflective Writing Analytics platform to provide actionable feedback within a tertiary authentic assessment context. The contributions are: (1) a new conceptual framework for reflective writing; (2) a computational approach to modelling reflective writing, deriving analytics, and providing feedback; (3) the pedagogical and user experience rationale for platform design decisions; and (4) a pilot in a student learning context, with preliminary data on educator and student acceptance, and the extent to which we can evidence that the software provided actionable feedback for reflective writing.
1 May 2016 in American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education
Objective. To determine the effectiveness of integrating reflective practice activities into a second-year undergraduate pharmacy curriculum and their impact on reflective thinking ability.Design. A cross-over design with repeated measures was employed. Newly developed reflective modules based on real hospital and community pharmacy cases were integrated into the second-year pharmacy practice curriculum. A novel strategy, the Reflective Ability Clinical Assessment (RACA), was introduced to enhance self- and peer reflection.Assessment. Student responses (n=214) to the adapted Kember et al1 Reflective Thinking Questionnaire (RTQ) were compared before and after reflective activities were undertaken. Significant improvement in three indicators of reflective thinking was shown after students engaged in reflective activities.Conclusion. Integration of reflective activities into a pharmacy curriculum increased the reflective thinking capacity of students. Enhancing reflective thinking ability may help students m...
1 February 2017 in American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education
Objectives. To investigate whether reflective-writing skills are associated with academic success. Methods. Two hundred sixty-four students enrolled in a pharmacy practice course completed reflective statements. Regression procedures were conducted to determine whether reflective-writing skills were associated with academic success in different assessment formats: written, oral, and video tasks. Results. Reflective-writing skills were found to be a predictor of academic performance in some formats of assessment: written examination; oral assessment task and overall score for the Unit of Study (UoS). Reflective writing skills were not found to predict academic success in the video assessment task. Conclusions. Possessing good reflective-writing skills was associated with improved academic performance. Further research is recommended investigating the impact of reflective skill development on academic performance measures in other health education.
1 December 2019 in Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy
Virtual reality (VR) lends itself to communication rehabilitation by creating safe, replicable, and authentic simulated environments in which users learn and practice communication skills. The aim ...