Reflective Diaries – A Tool for Promoting and Probing Student Learning

Paper in proceeding, 2016

For engineering students to be able to effectively solve problems in their future professions, it is essential that they become self-regulated learners and learn to reflect on their own learning using metacognitive strategies. One way to promote this is to introduce reflective diaries as a writing tool for students, and give them weekly prompts to reflect upon. These prompts should stimulate reflections on learning content and learning behavior, in order to help students in becoming self-regulated learners. In addition, reflective diaries allow for in-depth probing of student learning and can be used as a research method to better understand students’ learning processes. In this case study, we describe and evaluate the implementation of reflective diaries in a project-based undergraduate course at Chalmers University of Technology, based on diary entries and individual interviews with the students. We explore the potential of reflective diaries for promoting and probing student learning, as well as offer research-based guidelines for implementing reflective diaries in undergraduate courses.