On this module, we use an online reflective log to share stories, notes, ideas coming from the success and failures of our design practice (across teams). This post gives some guidance on how to evaluate your project activities through a series of blog entries.
Reflective writing helps your design projects in three ways (Zubizarreta, 2009). First, it enables you to document and evidence actions and activities. Second, it makes it easy to support feedback, mentoring, and collaboration. Finally, it helps to learn from success and failure, develop insight into why those occurred. Over time, it helps to make sense of complex issues. As you make entries over time, you capture observation through images and document notes, you’ll help revise your insight and reflection. So do review older posts and refer to those in newer entries for example by commenting on new insights gained.
Zubizarreta (2009, p. 46) mentions a number of aspects to consider for log entries:
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Dimensions |
Comments |
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Reflective depth |
Logs often focus on future improvements and change: to learn from an action, indicate what improvement is desirable and critically assess why and how! “What change was necessary?”, “What process did we use to facilitate change?”, “Why was the change desirable?” |
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Source of evidence |
(1) “Information from self” (teams’ set goals, earlier reflective entries); (2) “Information from others” (reflection on feedback from peers, the tech advisor, lecturer etc); (3) “Products of learning” (a note, or summary of, an achievement produced; interviews, requirements gathered, for instance). |
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Evidence |
(1) From field notes: images, videos; (2) From feedback: emails, classroom discussions; (3) From research: concept maps, references to published material |
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Consistency |
Posts should be of sufficient length to make their point, so at last a substantial paragraph in length; and an indicative entry per week would be around 500 words at least. Referencing to theory, literature, activities is desirable (see point ‘evidence’). |
As a general note, try to start each log entry with a brief introduction (to give a bit of context to the post as a whole). This will help the reader understand where you are coming from; and you may also discover that your posts connections to reflections from previous weeks.
An example of a good reflective log entry can be found here: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/digicivics-at-apl/2017/10/25/2-statements-of-community-consultation-meeting-with-the-stakeholders/
Sources for follow-up: Zubizarreta (2009). The Learning Portfolio. John Wiley & Sons