The Use of a Reflective Learning Journal in an Introductory Statistics Course

Abstract

Reflective learning entails a thoughtful learning process through which one not only learns a particular piece of knowledge or skill, but better understands how one learned it—knowledge that can then be transferred well beyond the scope of the specific learning experience. This type of thinking empowers learners by making them more active participants in the learning process. There is also evidence to suggest that reflective learning can help students manage the negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, and disappointment) that may arise while taking a challenging course. Such emotions can be rampant in statistics courses, especially for non-statistics majors (e.g., psychology students). Because the introductory statistics course is such an important (though often dreaded) course for psychology undergraduates, I believed that the learning experience could be improved if students were encouraged to engage in more reflective thinking. To this end, I introduced a reflective learning journal into my class. In this report, I briefly review my rationale for incorporating a reflective learning journal into an introductory statistics course. I then describe how this was accomplished and share some preliminary evidence of its positive effects on the student learning experience.