Checklist for reflective writing

http://elecengtf.pbworks.com/Reflective-Writing
When assessing a reflective writing report the following is a list of things that the lecturer is looking
for. You don’t need to do all of these; just try some.

The student…
 Gives a brief account of the work and spreads this through the reflection
 Does not solely write about what was done and nothing else
 Shows awareness of how they learnt; possible ways are:
 Learning by reading/research
 Learning by doing/experiment
 Learning by asking other students and by explaining his/her ideas to others
 Learning by asking the lecturer/lab technician questions
 Learning by thinking about the experiment, checking it against the theory and deciding
whether he/she is now satisfied or is still curious
 Connects the different ways of learning into Kolb’s learning cycle and judges whether or not
this cycle is applicable to him/her (see http://www.rlo-
cetl.ac.uk:8080/rlo/reflective_writing/reflective_writing.html for information on this)
 Describes something that motivated him/her to learn
 Shows some awareness of his/her learning style and compares this to the result of a learning
style test
 Does not just talk about what was done but focuses more on how an approach was
developed and why decisions were taken
 Criticises his/her work by identifying the good and bad points
 Talks about ideas for next time; shows that he/she will modify behaviour, even in a small
way, based on the experience
 Discusses how the experience has not just improved technical knowledge but has also had
implications for other skills – self learning, communication, team work, etc.
 Has an awareness of the broader picture and how concepts from other modules have fed into
this

Ways to reflect:
Write about something you’ve learnt and how this happened. What did you not know before this
problem, what do you know now and how did you bridge the gap.
Describe something that’s important to you but you’re still not sure about and suggest how you
might find the answer to this question or suggest some possible answers.
What you did well, what went wrong, what would you do different next time
Applications of what you’ve been doing in a wider context/the world
Gibb’s approach to reflection: