What I have been doing
I am writing this post to re-evaluate how I write reflection journals (again), because I am becoming anxious that my journals are not hitting the assessment criteria. This would be quite bad for me personally, because I have put in a significant effort to write good reflection journals, and yet I might still get a bad mark. Before I get into the details of why, I should discuss the recent trend of these reflection journals / blog posts, and why I am having doubts.
The current state of my reflection journals
My recent posts have been on a trend of significantly increased detail, but decreased problem-solving and ethical discussion. This is due to a number of reasons.
Firstly, they are covering much more complex topics - the days of explaining switch cases are long gone, recently I have been trying to explain highly advanced stereo matching algorithms. Explaining more complex topics just innately takes more time and words, and therefore I have less room for reflection and ethical discussion.
Most importantly though, I have been writing these journals as a way to explain the content I have been learning, when I could just be stating what content I have learnt. Explaining things takes a lot of words, and it is not actually required under the rubric. I started explaining things for two main reasons. I have started writing these posts as a way to strengthen my university/job applications, where I feel they want proof I actually understand complex topics which is achieved through explaining it. Explaining content in reflection journals is also a fairly natural way for me to learn new content which saves a lot of time for me, as it means I can work on two assessment items at once.
Personally, I believe these changes were entirely beneficial to this reflection journal as a product. The issue is, this journal is not really hitting the rubric criteria.
How these reflection journals should look
I am yet to confirm any of this with my teacher, but based on my previous feedback and reading the rubric more carefully, I can determine a rough outline for how these reflections are meant to look. The academic criteria for these reflection journals (i.e. the rubric) is based on reflecting on the weeks work. This involves the following:
- State the work you completed, and explain the relevant theory, so anyone can understand what you are talking about. Do not get into specifics.
- Discuss any issues you came across, and how you solved them / how you could have solved them. If you ran into no issues, you can discuss why you had no issues. (majority of words)
- Discuss the ethics of the concepts you are exploring when it is relevant.
- Reflect on your learning. Consider how ‘good’ it was. This can include discussing your time management, efficiency and satisfaction of learning.
From this analysis, it is clear my reflection journals are hitting the criteria for discussing completed work, and explaining the theory, but they are not hitting the criteria for problem-solving and ethics.
Where to go from here
Considering that I only have 3 assessable journal entries left for each subject, I cannot just change how I am writing journal entries. Despite adding some ethical and problem-solving discussion, there will not be enough to make up the marks I have lost. I instead have to compensate for the lack of ethical and problem-solving discussion by writing a few reflections that are all ethical discussion, and all problem-solving. I need to do this for both classes, so I need at least 2 ethics reflections, and 2 problem-solving reflections. Considering that these reflections have no set guidelines, it is important to plan them, so they do not get off the rails.
How to write good ethics and problem-solving reflections
These reflections must be on a topic related to my IT classwork. This may become particularly hard when thinking of an ethical discussion topic, as there is often no pressing discussion to be had. The reflections should also be at a high quality to ensure the marks are compensated for.
The ethics reflections would preferably be relevant and highly controversial topics, so they are engaging to read and interesting to write. Some examples are generative AI, robotic weapons and human machine augmentation. These reflections should be highly informed with a strong backing in research. I will need to understand the discussion, and critically analyse the ethical backing of any given discussion point.
The problem-solving reflections should follow a quality problem-solving process. First I must define the problem, and discuss its impact to show I can recognise problems as they arise. Then, I need to define potential solution/s, which should be critically analysed to a final conclusion. This shows that I can determine a highly informed solution to a problem through ideation and analysis. These should be easier to write than the ethics reflections due to having no research requirement; in fact this reflection is one of my problem-solving reflections.
Conclusion
I believe the solution of writing ethics and problem-solving reflections is strong and achievable. I am not entirely sure whether this will fix my marks, as consistency may affect the rubric, but it is still my best option. Once the research for the ethics discussions has been completed, the rest should not be any harder than a typical reflection, just more focused. I say this still after writing this reflection journal, which followed the plan I set for writing problem-solving reflections.