Online self-reflection: My research as a CRADLE Fellow
13 April 2018
I have been a CRADLE Fellow since mid-2017. Like many academics I have always been fascinated by the scholarship of teaching and learning, but have struggled to prioritise it in my research work before this opportunity came along.
For a year prior to my Fellowship I’d been pondering the ethical and pedagogical implications of online self-reflection. Reflective learning is an enigmatic beast: it’s difficult to teach, and it’s very hard to observe in the “wilderness” of an online learning space. My interest in reflective learning was initially sparked during a unit I studied in the Graduate Certificate of Higher Education here at Deakin. The first set reading (Ross, 2011) posed several ethical conundrums in the use of online reflective practice and, much like the hidden bear in the Toblerone symbol, they couldn’t be un-seen from then on! In the following months I shaped my curiosity and concern into a tentative research plan, and shared it with Phillip and David at CRADLE for some informal feedback. With their encouragement I submitted a CRADLE Fellowship application and was thrilled to be offered a position in the 2017 round.
Spot the bear… Image credit: Ashley Pomeroy / CC by 3.0.
The Fellowship program allows me room to explore several aspects of this topic. I am currently investigating the perceived risks and benefits of online self-reflection in teaching and learning. Self-disclosing information about our knowledge, ideas and opinions online can be a very risky business, yet students and teachers do this frequently in online learning environments. In addition, the complexities surrounding risk, incentives, and personal identity management for online teachers and students is poorly understood. I’ve completed focus groups with teachers on this topic, and am preparing to launch a Deakin-wide survey with both teachers and students. These findings are also informing an intervention study I’m planning for later this year, where guest contributors with industry experience will provide some strategic self-reflections on a unit discussion board and throughout the unit content. The study will investigate how online students interact with these authentic disclosures, and the impact these have on their own reflective learning.
At Deakin we’re always facing new challenges for the provision of formative assessment and feedback in the digital learning space. My ultimate goal for this project is to establish some much-needed local guidelines around the risks, benefits, and supports for self-reflection practice online. This aim complements CRADLE’s broader work as innovators in online pedagogy and pioneers in digital learning research. In the future I hope to expand my investigation into other areas of online teaching practice, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and the use of online training in the healthcare industry.
One of the major benefits to being a CRADLE Fellow is my involvement in the Centre’s broader research and training activities, including last year’s research symposium. During my visits to the CRADLE office I have also tapped into the collective experience of the team when troubleshooting issues such as student/teacher recruitment, and the ethical considerations in using students’ work for research purposes. As a time-poor academic, having access to experts who can point me in the direction of relevant literature and methodologies has been invaluable. So if you, like me, are a teaching academic who is keen to pursue the scholarship of online learning, I would highly recommend considering a CRADLE Fellowship.
Ross, J. (2011) Traces of self: online reflective practices and performances in higher education, Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 113-126.
