LEARN MORE AT REFLECTION LABS
ONE
Reflective Practice
Interviews, Websites, ePortfolios, UnPortfolios, & Self-Authoring
Whose responsibility is it to make a learning experience's objectives relevant to its learners' academic-to-career paths? Do they even have paths? By creating access points for student purpose, these reflective practices can enhance the objectives of a specific discipline. But they will also find traction in academic coaching and advising where there is space to think between the disciplines. In this case, through critical making in reflective genres, we can create a scaffolding from which learners can begin to see how all the discrete disciplinary objectives and projects relate to one another in a landscape which does not already lend itself to such integrated learning.
TWO
Writing Communities
LMS and CMS, Social Media, & In-Person Workshops
How can we design learning spaces and interactions for more authentic engagement? Why solely rely on a combination of word processors and LMS tools to teach writing? Consider what could be done with a rich content management system like WordPress to scaffold more streamlined and exciting interactions. What makes for engaging spaces in person (multidirectional learning, sandboxing, conversation, a variety of communication channels) makes for better learning spaces online too. When we build something physical, the best feedback we can get about our labor is that the thing works. In writing communities, we can find out if our writing works, and if so, how it works.
THREE
Mindfulness in Education & Contemplative Pedagogy
Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Communalogue, & Silence
On campus, there are student centers where people can make extracurricular, co-curricular, or personal connections. There, you'll find student government, clubs, a cafe, career support. But we can also scaffold for the cognitive space required for making such connections. Who or what is at the center of your students' experience? I coach educators interested in developing a contemplative approach tailored to their own discipline's core learning outcomes or to objectives of their academic coaching services. We can create opportunities for constructive pauses to learning/making so that students are more authentically situated in the work they are doing -- so that they bring awareness to what is already at the center of their experience. This is about being a well student in addition to being an excellent one. Create the space.