The Role of a Reflection Tool in Enhancing Students Reflection

Mario Mäeots (1) , Leo Siiman (1) , Külli Kori (1) , Mats Eelmets (1) , Margus Pedaste (1) , Anjo Anjewierden (2)

1 University of Tartu
2 Department of Instructional Technology

Reflection is a cognitive process that can help students understand and learn from their learning experiences. This implies thinking back about the course of learning processes in order to enable better behaviour and actions in the future. Reflection is more efficient if it is supported by technological tools. These tools offer the ability to present detailed information about learning processes (e.g., use of time during a specific learning process) and the ability to provide guidance, for example in the form of questions that support reflection. In this paper we present the results of a study carried out with 9th grade students (mean age 15.0 years, n=59) to clarify the role of a Reflection Tool to support students’ reflection. The Reflection Tool in this study is a web-based application that was tailored for a chemistry-based Inquiry Learning Space (ILS) called “What does pH measure?”. The ILS and Reflection Tool were developed as part of the EU funded project called Go-Lab (see www.go-labproject. eu). Students were divided into two conditions. In experimental condition the Reflection Tool was used and in the control condition it was not. Furthermore, two types of devices were used to implement the Reflection Tool: tablets and personal computers. Assessment of the Reflection Tool was based on coding the response to open-ended questions that support reflection. Two aspects were assessed in students’ reflections: content (technical, situational and sensitising) and reflection level (description, justification, critique, dialogue and transfer). A qualitative analysis and a non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test were used to detect to what extent the Reflection Tool helps identify students’ reflection content and levels. Although, there was no statistically significant difference in favour of the Reflection Tool, the results still showed that the Reflection Tool enabled to identify students’ reflection content and levels. In this paper we discuss the possible interpretations of these results.

Keywords: reflection

Domains: Education

Mario Mäeots, Leo Siiman, Külli Kori, Mats Eelmets, Margus Pedaste, et al.. The Role of a Reflection Tool in Enhancing Students Reflection. 10th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2016), Mar 2016, Valencia, Spain. ⟨hal-01399091⟩