THE 4Es: JOT TO REFLECT

by
KHALIPAH MASTURA BINTI KHALID
MOHAMAD AZLAN BIN MOHD NOOR
NURUL ASMA BINTI MAT NASIR
KOLEJ MATRIKULASI KEJURUTERAAN KEDAH

A. INTRODUCTION
This innovation was created by 3 innovators from the English Unit of Kolej Matrikulasi
Kejuruteraan Kedah. The main innovator is Madam Khalipah Mastura Binti Khalid and the
2 co-innovators are Mr Mohamad Azlan Bin Mohd Nor and Ms Nurul Asma Binti Mat Nasir.
The name of the group is The Blog Jotters and the innovation is named as The 4Es; Jot To
Reflect.

B. PROJECT OVERVIEW
A blog is an online diary or journal located on a website. The content of a blog typically
includes text, pictures, videos, animated GIFs and even scans from old physical offline
diaries or journals and other hard copy documents. Since a blog can exist merely for personal
use, sharing information with an exclusive group or to engage the public, a blog owner can
set their blog for private or public access and for this purpose of innovation, it is set as public
access to encourage other readers to respond and share their feedback.

A lot of people wonder why blogs and blogging have become so popular. Blogs provide a
social outlet and people are actively seek out other people offline or online for interaction
and sharing of knowledge and perspectives. Even many people who are anti-social in face-
to-face, offline settings enjoy interacting online through social networks using their true
identities or anonymous personas. Since a blog is a social tool, creating or reading blogs
provides them with a better alternative method for interacting with others that did not
previously exist.

Basically, this innovation is on writing reflections and getting feedback from students after
each activity. The lecturer can enhance her next activity based on the feedback given and not
only from her own observations. Students express themselves better after they get used to
writing comments via blog. After each class activity, learners were required to post
reflections on the teaching and learning practices and classroom experience including the
teaching methods they learned and their opinions, and optionally make comments on their
peers’ messages. All the learners have to do is click on the link provided at the end of the
blog post and they are able to write responses or reflections to what the instructor has initiated
in topics and concerns on her blogs.
 Why the innovators picked blog as the innovation?
The reasons are summarized in the table below.

C. OBJECTIVES
a. To investigate learners’ perceptions on their personal development based on the journal
writing activities
b. To explore the potential of blogs in collecting feedback on the teaching and learning.
c. To reflect on the outcome of teaching and learning based on learners’ reflective journal
writing.

D. BEFORE AND AFTER

Before creating the innovation, the English lecturers have been facing a lot of problems to
get active responses from the students especially when it comes to communicative parts, be
it in a spoken form or in a written form. This is because they are still tied up with this long
list of weaknesses for so long.
a. Having negative thinking or negative mind-set
Having negative thinking or negative mind-set is a thought process where
people tend to find the worst in everything, or reduce their expectations by
considering the worst possible scenarios. This approach can allay
disappointment in some situations. Students have already set their minds that
English is a very difficult subject to learn, therefore learning English is a pain
in the neck for most of them.

b. Having mental blocks

Mental blocks are invisible barriers standing in the way of the productivity. If one is
dealing with mental blocks at work, he/she may find it challenging to complete a train
of thought or see a project to the end. He/she may ruminate on the same problems over
and over, unable to focus long enough to make progress. In learning English as a
Second Language, having mental blocks will stop students from being comfortable to
communicate in the language.
c. A big NO to English
When they are trying very hard to write or speak in ‘a perfect way’, ‘without any
grammatical or structural errors’ but failed to do that because teachers keep on
correcting their mistakes by interrupting during the oral presentations, group
discussions or giving a lot comments in their written tasks, students ended having
serious negative perceptions on English, therefore it is a big NO.

d. The mechanics of writing

Writing mechanics are the established rules that should be followed when writing
sentences. They go hand in hand with grammar as the standards to follow when writing
and are an important way to effectively communicate ideas. By consensus, the rules
on grammar and writing mechanics have become the official standard. They are not
set in stone though, but using them as a guide is still a good idea. For many of our
students, following strictly to the mechanic of writing is a burden which actually
demotivate them to use the language.

e. Previous learning experience

As most students, adults or children, many students have experienced a number of
negative learning experiences over their lifetime, everything from poor instructional
methods to strongly influential teachers. These learning experiences have created
impressions and preconceptions that added to the diversity of their classroom
experience.
It is important to examine not only positive learning experiences but negative ones as
well, to understand the influence that the past learning experience makes on the future
learning. Most of their negative learning experience occurs in the first early stages of
schooling till their secondary level and some of the students’ needs were not properly
addressed.

f. No feedback on the T& L

As far as the innovators were concerned, there were no extensive feedback gathered
on the teaching and learning process. The lecturers did not really put a lot of effort
in gaining reflective information on their teaching and also how the students feel
about their learning.

E. PROBLEMS FACED BEFORE THE INNOVATION

Written or spoken communication can be a very difficult task for students who are learning
English as a second language therefore, they tend to reserve from making the effort to write
properly. This innovation was created to explore the potential of blogs in collecting feedback
on the T&L process in realistic circumstances, and to highlight the strength and weaknesses
of current practice in order to build more effective practice in upcoming activities. This
innovation through blog, a kind of social network tool, allows one to share ideas and to
engage the audiences in conversation. It can be a helpful tool for instructors to enhance their
students’ communication skills and increase their students’ investment in learning.
This innovation presented the students ‘experiences in using blogs as learning journals and
how they express their points of view on the activities done. Qualitative data were collected
 from observations of 49 engineering students’ entry comments and also interviews with 8
students to gain more perspective about their experiences in using the blogs in their learning.

F. THE BENEFITS OF THE INNOVATION

The findings showed that students enjoyed the use of computer tools in their lessons and
most of them expressed their reliefs that their voices are taken into consideration. Students’
recommendations to improve the use of blogs as learning journal based on their own
experiences were also revealed. Contradict to the assumption that the use of abbreviated
words and colloquial language may affect learners’ writing development, the findings proved
that the ignorance of writing mechanics allow the learner to voice their ideas better and this
would become a motivating source for students’ personal development. This also gives
benefits to the educator to prepare better activities for future students.

a. Novelty
This innovation was invented wholly by the main innovator without duplicating any
innovation by other innovators. This is mainly because using blog in the teaching
and learning has been practiced for many years by her. Therefore, when she
encountered with many different types of problems and weaknesses found in her
students’ abilities to use English as a second language, she finally came up with this
innovation.

She has used this innovation for many years and updated the version till now and it
can be practically used during this new norm where online teaching and learning is
a must for everyone. It is very important to note that this innovation can help to gain
reflective responses or notes from the students. By expressing themselves, students
start writing simple sentences and slowly gather their confidence to write more and
longer sentences.

b. Practicality And Usability

The 4Es: Jot to Reflect is very practical to be used in our daily classrooms. Be it
during the face-to-face interaction or online interaction. Educators only need to
create her own blog and must be consistent in uploading post entries after classes.
Encouraging students to respond and write their reflection is very important so as to
make sure they get the skill and be inspired to write.

c. Impact/Efficient/ Significant/Relevant
Students are able to write more sentences with the help of friends and lecturers.
Before using the innovation, students were hesitated in writing their thoughts. They
felt less confident in expressing themselves but after using the innovation, the flow
of ideas came smoothly and they are able to write more and longer sentences.

d. Replication/ Commercialization
This innovation was shared with lecturers from other institutions and were carried
out by them with their students. The objective is more to sharing and replication of
the innovation. Not only the English lecturers used this 4ES: Jot to Reflect
 innovation, but it is widely spread and used by the lecturers and educators from other
subjects as well. We do not stop only at Kolej Matrikulasi Kejuruteraan Kedah but
we go further and reached other parts of the country as well.

The institutions are:

 Kolej Matrikulasi Pahang
 Kolej Matrikulasi Perlis
 Kolej Matrikulasi Kedah
 Kolej Matrikulasi Johor
 Kolej Matrikulasi Kelantan
 Kolej Matrikulasi Kejuruteraan Pahang
 Kolej Tingkatan Enam Sultan Salahudin, Kedah
 Kolej Tingkatan Enam Desa Murni, Pulau Pinang
 Management and Science University College (MSUC)

G. FINDINGS AND IMPACTS

•Enjoy writing informally for others to read

•Encourage authentic writing practice: (enable students to recycle language input
learned in the classroom, provide an alternative way of communicating with instructors
and peers, create a collaborative learning environment)
•Express their reliefs that their voices are taken into considerations
•Reveal the learners’ recommendation to improve the use of blog as their learning
journals.
•Proven that the ignorance of writing mechanics allows the learners to share their ideas
better.
•Becoming a motivating source for learners’ personal development.
•Gives benefits to the educator to prepare better activities for future
students
•Demonstrate independent action by taking responsibility for ownership of the content
and quality of what they write as they produce a publicly accessible text.
•Supporting the Green Innovation-paperless and sky is the limit.
•By writing about their learning, learners were better able to see and understand
their thinking and change their conceptions when necessary- both important
elements in higher levels of reflection and cognitive processing.
•Use of blogs as a platform to critically reflect on their learning processes as well
as to gauge the impact of blogs on their own professional growth

H. INSTRUCTIONS TO VIEWERS/READERS
1. Log in to the url given:
https://masturasspot.blogspot.com
2. Viewers/readers will be able to see the blog heading and title.
3. Browse through the labels of category listed so that searching for interested entries will be
easier as bloggers will always labelled their entries under categories.

4. Once read, viewers/readers can share their responses or views by clicking the comment
section and start writing.

5. They can either use their own names or remain as anonymous.

6. If they are not interested to give comments or respond to the blog entry, reading will be
good enough to gain knowledge or new information on certain sharing.
I. RELATED PHOTOS & EVIDENCE