Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Odds are you have, and that it was a much-needed reminder to someone expressing regret or frustration with their past.
You encouraged them to dust themselves off and keep on keepin’ on. Why? Because they’re capable and they’ve got
this!
But is it always bad to look back? Definitely not! There’s a special kind of looking back that can be powerfully good at
informing what we do in the future. And that’s called reflection.
—Sorin Kierkegaard
As student affairs professionals aiming to support student growth, reflection should be one piece of the pie! Reflection is
also an awesome tool for boosting the effectiveness of on-campus programming efforts. We see institutions doing this
already, especially in connection to co-curricular pathways and targeted initiatives.
When we reflect, we take a close look at the effort we’ve put in, what we’ve experienced, and what we’ve gotten out of
what we’ve done.
This may sound like a simple or subconscious part of moving around in the world, but the point of reflection is that it is
intentional. It only takes a few minutes of looking back and focusing on the experience to get insights that will guide us
as we move forward!
The information we get out of the reflection process tells us what we can do in the future to improve our results. We
can identify some areas of improvement and sharpen our goals to better situate us so we can achieve what it is we
want. This process is one that will result in a noticeable change in the development of ourselves, our work, and our
processes.
Even if you utilize reflections already, it’s important to…reflect…on the questions you’re using to encourage reflection —
a meta-reflection of sorts!
What good are you trying to do? What good are students getting? What good could they be getting? Choosing
questions that are impactful is key, and if you’re looking to critically examine the programs and services you’re providing
to students, look no further!
Knowing what questions to ask can be a difficult beast because we want the reflection experience to be as meaningful as
possible for students to engage with.
No matter what the program that’s being reflected on, we recommend that your questions be simple, open, and
practical.
Simple questions rewrite the narrative that reflection has to be “deep” and ensure that the barriers and stakes are both
low for students to get started. (Not to mention this also makes maintenance easy for administrators.)
Open questions honor students’ experiences and encourage them to engage in ways that are most meaningful to them.
This acknowledges the importance of agency and the ways that different experiences may be interpreted differently by
different people and contexts.
Practical questions apply straightforwardly to students’ lives outside the classroom. This gives them a chance to develop
their critical thinking skills and base of knowledge far beyond the academic venue.
It’s no secret that the content of these reflections can impact more than just students; for instance, their responses may
steer the future of program tracks at your campus. Plus, you get to see what students are getting out of the programs
already in place, which can spark ideas for how things might be adjusted to better achieve the program’s and student
members’ goals.
This, of course, connects to the larger vision and future of the institution. When working to drive engagement, collecting
responses from students allows student affairs professionals to track student learning while showing the institution’s
efficacy. That’s critical for the process of securing funding and, increasingly, for accreditation!
21 REFLECTIONPROMPTS
Here at Presence, there are five main prompts that we encourage you to use. These are set as the default questions in
our software when you start customizing your reflection form. They’re simple, broad, and practical.
These questions go deeper and deeper as they go on, similar to the way Bloom’s Taxonomy works. We’ve included some
other questions which are variations of the core ones, targeting specific aspects which might cater better to certain
programs and purposes.
Encouraging the student to describe how they interacted and communicated with others boosts their self-awareness
and encourages them to dig deeper, helping them recognize how they may have been perceived by others as well.
Identifying positive bits about what we’re doing (like what was special about it) increases our satisfaction in and
appreciation of what we do while still keeping an eye towards improvement.
Q3. What did you learn?
Asking students what they learned encourages them to decide what the effect of their participation was on themselves
personally, beyond any of our stated outcomes. They get to distinguish what they knew before from what they know
now. We recognize that reflecting on learning outside of a purely academic context may seem strange to students, but
these questions inspire self-development.
Learning something particular to the program’s subject matter or something related to a problem they’re facing allows
direct reflection on the ways that they might have learned something that connects to them more personally
Students get a chance to connect this experience to the bigger picture of their involvement on campus and their
development as a person during their college years. Pointing out healthy risks (opportunities to step outside of our
comfort zones) inspires us to grow new skills. We also get to grow by connecting our experiences over time (past,
present, and future) together.
Q5. How would you apply what you learned in school? With friends? With family? In the community? In your career?
Thinking through concrete ways to apply these new skills to certain situations regularly is another helpful way to extend
the student beyond their current setting and consider how they can apply what they’ve learned.
Thinking explicitly about the other domains of our lives and how we can actively work to improve those is what this gets
at. Students get to realize the real-life applicability of what they’re doing and can feel like they’re making progress in all
areas of life!
Once you begin to use some of these questions, let us know how they’re working for you by tweeting @HelloPresence!
And PS: A campus engagement tool (like Presence!) can make the creation and management of reflections simple and
convenient thanks to the power of automation and conditional logic.