Campus to clients: a powerful learning tool: lessons from an exam reflection assignment.

• Author: Kelley, Ann Galligan

AMERICAN PHILOSOPHER AND EDUCATOR JOHN Dewey has been credited with the idea that "we do not actually learn from experience as much as we learn from reflecting on experience" (Posner, Field Experience: A Guide to Reflective Teaching, p. 21 (Pearson 2005)).

Reflection is a valuable learning tool for the classroom and for professionals in practice: Both groups can learn from reflecting on their successes and failures and the steps that led to these outcomes.

This column describes an assignment used in a university classroom after each exam to require students to be responsible for their own learning, with the goal of improving future outcomes. It also can apply to CPA firms if staff professionals reflect on their job evaluations to achieve higher goals.

Assignment Details and Motivation

Within a week after an exam, it is typically returned to students and carefully reviewed in class to enhance student learning and provide timely feedback. However, instructors frequently hear comments such as, "But I studied for hours. I don't understand why I only got a 70." Many students do not know how to really study or what type of learners they are. This teachable moment should not pass unnoticed. A reflection assignment provides a structure that helps students assess how they best learn and how to succeed in a course. It prompts them to think about what works for them and what they can do differently going forward. As Plato said, "Know thyself."

Students are required to complete a "reflection paper" for homework immediately after an exam is returned and reviewed in class. Each student uploads the completed reflection paper to the instructor's online dropbox within 48 hours of the exam review. The instructor asks several of the high-achieving students if a few of their comments may be read anonymously in class as examples of successful strategies for learning and thus positive outcomes on exams. Weaker students have indicated that hearing some of these strategies proves insightful.

As a result of this exam result assessment exercise, students:

* Take ownership and responsibility for their learning.

* Actively reflect on the studying and learning approaches that help and hinder exam success.

* Improve their learning and studying approaches. They learn which techniques work for them and which do not.

* Are better prepared for greater success on future exams.

* Learn actions to help them improve low exam scores the next time.

* Can better understand why their study techniques might not have resulted in a good score.

* Can evaluate whether they made helpful changes since the last exam and reflection.

Importance of a Reflective Exercise

An instructor must set challenging, achievable expectations for students' learning. Most students want to learn and succeed on exams. Many students are excellent learners and intuitively understand, perhaps through years of practice and getting to know themselves, what it takes to learn and do well on exams. Other students mistakenly think that if they attend class, do the minimum assigned homework, and memorize facts, they are learning. Nothing could be further from the truth. A college education should prepare students to become lifelong learners.

The authoritarian model ("sage on the stage"), where an instructor imparts knowledge via lectures to...