Reflections on E-Reflections

When the new semester was about to start, I was still struggling whether to stick to my previous and more or less ritualized ways of assessment, that is, one project (either individual or group and divided into different stages) plus an open book quiz. I have been using this type of assessment scheme for some years now and thus am very familiar with it. To go for something I have done before will be much easier for me, as open book quiz is done online and marking is automatic.

But I have also been thinking whether I intend the course to be simply an acquisition of knowledge about cultural practices which is constantly undergoing change or to use the course to serve as a link between conceptual and experiential learning. How is the latter possible? How can what I teach in class be relevant to students' experience as a cross-cultural communicator? With these initial questions in mind, I started to turn my attention to an alternative way of assessment. Hence, the assignment of e-reflections or blogging.

I am a strong believer of the values of reflective practices especially in the form of free-writing without much of a concern about quality and correctness. To me, when we are overly concerned about the quality of our writing, our flow of thoughts can get stuck. Thus reflections are more about clarity and depth of ideas and thinking than about grammar and structure.

To me, writing freely about what we learn and what we experience in our subject of learning helps us grasp difficult concepts, improve our thinking, and achieve a sense of ownership for what we learn. In this sense, writing contributes to our intellectual development. I have practiced reflective journaling for many years to enhance my teaching and learning, but this has always been done on word processor or on paper and pencil. Publishing my reflective journaling in the form of blogging is a completely new experience to me. I have never used blogs before, though I have read a lot of linguistic research on blogs and have even supervised students' projects on the use of blogs. In fact, I don't even know how to set up a blog. Fortunately, one of my colleagues has been very encouraging and offered to help. Thus this quite unprepared form of assessment.

I can sense that there are a lot of advantages of using blogs to do our e-reflections. One of the advantages is that there is a sense of audience for our writing, though I admit that free writing is often private. When we are aware that other people (tutor, classmates and the wider public) will be reading and commenting on our writing, our writing becomes more targeted rather than as mere pouring of emotions, as often in the case of private journaling. Another advantage is that blogs, unlike other internet media (such as forums), have a more reader-friendly interface which allows us to upload graphics, thus making our posts more interesting. But of course, this and other advantages will be exploited more by tech-savvy people than by unadventurous people like me.

I write this post with two purposes in mind: to reassure those who are equally intimidated by the new experience that we are in the same boat and at the same time to let you all know the development of the idea of e-reflections.