Cisco Systems CCNA 2 B.5.2 Journals and reflection

B.5.2 Journals and reflection

An effective evaluation practice for students is to write in journals and reflect on academic

experiences. Students can document their individual learning process and highlight important

concepts. A learning log asks students to document their learning steps and indicate what is

clear, what confuses them, and what they would like to learn more about. This provides

important information about how students interact with, and process, new content. Instructors

can determine if students are satisfied with their program and motivated to continue. Journals

are self-reflective and encourage students to reveal personal thoughts, feelings, and ideas.

Some students may choose not to share this type of information. If instructors decide to

practice this type of assessment in their classrooms, there must be clear communication

between the instructor and the students about the purpose of this activity.

The teaching and learning environment is strengthened when instructors and students take

time each day for reflection. Metacognition occurs when people think about their thought

processes. This can be done through written, verbal, kinesthetic, or musical activities.

Reflection is an important tool to develop new comprehensions about the world. When

students ask essential questions about their learning experiences, they can improve their

information processing skills and become better problem solvers and communicators.

Journals provide a space for inner thought and reflection on experiences that occur in the

teaching and learning process. Instructors that incorporate journal writing into curriculum will

usually set aside a period of time for this process. The teacher and students can use this time

to reflect on completed tasks or make predictions about future experiences. Thoughts and

ideas can be written down in a dedicated, personal paper space or in a word processor file.

These thoughts can take many forms such as words, sentences, illustrations, maps, charts,

magazine pictures, and newspapers. Journal entries can take the form of guided or free-style

writing. Through this type of reflection, teachers and students can track their comprehension of

issues and themes over time.

Academy instructors may want to instruct students to keep a technical or engineering journal

to record details about all aspects of their network design and installation experiences. This

may not seem important at first. However, it will help students develop a habit that will become

more important as they increase their networking experiences. These journals are usually

paperbound composition books in which pages are dated and added, but never removed. The

entries would include things such as daily reflections, troubleshooting, details, procedures and

observations, equipment logs, hardware and software notes, and router configurations.

Student reflection is an important element of instruction with limited time requirements. The

process helps students analyze and become more responsible for their learning. During

reflection, the students think about an aspect of the lesson and write a reaction in the study

guide. This internalization of learning helps the students set goals and make sense of the

learning process. It also links prior learning to present and future learning. The reflection

process helps students analyze and synthesize new comprehension. Students use the

cognitive processes of assimilation and accommodation to move learning from short term to

long-term memory. After each lesson, students should reflect on one or more of the following

categories:

• Content

• Product

• Process