Reflection…

One of my biggest concerns about taking the PGCAP qualification is that I felt I may struggle to be able to relate and understand some of the non-technical (yet very valid) teaching and learning techniques, particularly that of reflective learning.  I’m sure that part of my lack of understanding will be unfamiliarity with the terminology and perhaps I’m already doing lots of these things, but I know them by a different name.

Today was my first lecture for the Engineering Construction module and the particular topic that I was delivering is all about sustainability.  The design of the lecture notes and accompanying presentations is intended to establish a principle where the students are able to define a set of sustainable values that they can embrace when they design to and that they can perhaps extend to other parts of their life.

I’ve been reading through a few^[1,2,3] texts about reflective learning and practices to try and understand a little better how I could perhaps start to integrate this into my lectures.  Clearly I’m going to struggle in lectures where I ask the students to undertake an engineering calculation where the answer is a finite number, but a module where they have to establish a set of principles and then apply them to various scenarios sounds ideal.

I decided that I’d set their homework for this week to try and promote an element of reflection, bearing in mind that my understanding of reflection is in its infancy and very likely to be clumsy and I’m seeking to improve this with practice and as I progress further into the PGCAP course I’m hopeful that I’ll start to embed this without even perhaps realising it’s reflection, simply a tool I can employ to help with my teaching.

The assignment that I’ve set a group of 120 or so students this week is to calculate their individual carbon footprints using the  WWF carbon footprint calculator and to then to reflect about how they could reduce their carbon footprint using the carbon reduction tools that are available.

I think this will help them to understand that some measures to reduce their carbon footprint are quite extreme and can impact the quality of life, whereas other carbon reduction techniques are quite straightforward and very easy to implement into even the busiest and financially constrained of lives.

I’ll be really interested to hear next week what sort of solutions they come back with… and how hard they think some of the carbon reduction techniques would be to implement into their lives.  I was never encouraged to think like this during my Civil Engineering degree, but then I didn’t really study any non-engineering subjects and I’d have relished being able to study sustainability… it always comes back to one of my favourite quotes by Ghandi “Be the change you wish to see in the world”.

[1] McDrury J, Alterio M. Learning Through Storytelling in Higher Education: Using Reflection and Experience to Improve Learning. London: Kogan Page Limited; 2003.

[2] http://www.itslifejimbutnotasweknowit.org.uk/files/whatisreflectivepractice.pdf

[3] http://www.cumbria.ac.uk/Public/Education/Documents/Research/ReflectiveTeachingGuide.pdf