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Session 1 Building a reflective journal
Session 1 Building a reflective journal
A reflective journal could be a notebook, a Word file or an online blog where you record your reflections in the form of notes on your learning about a particular course or experience.
As well as doing practical activities, you are also encouraged and advised to keep a reflective journal on this course. This is not a compulsory activity but is extremely helpful, because an important aspect of your role as a facilitator is to be able to reflect on and learn from what you are doing.
As you work through the course, it will be useful to look back on your notes.
Reflection is defined as an activity that involves learning from your experiences by critically thinking back and evaluating your actions, considering and reviewing the impact of those actions and planning what you would do in similar situations in the future. Reflection can sometimes seem quite a difficult (and perhaps not very relevant) activity for someone who deals with lots of quickly changing situations and challenges, such as those you might come across in an online conversation. However, reflection provides an excellent way for you as a facilitator to better understand what is happening and how you might be able to do things differently in future.An extremely simple way of reflecting on your role is to use a three-question approach:
- What? Critically review your actions.
- So what? Consider the impact of those actions.
- Now what? Plan what you would do in similar situations in the future.
1.1 Thinking about your own experience
In this section you will think about your experience so far and how that will help with your ability to become an online facilitator.
Activity 1
Thinking back over your experience in online conversations, is there a time when something went wrong? Consider your interactions with others on Facebook or perhaps when you used a messaging tools such as Viber, WhatsApp or Instant Messenger.
Maybe no one responded to a particular message or a person you were communicating in an online group misunderstood a message posted by someone else.
Use the questions and prompts below to review what happened or what you did and consider the impact. You may wish to note down your thoughts in your reflective journal.
Then, thinking about your role as an online facilitator, plan what you would do in the future.
Note this in your journal too.
What?
- What happened?
- What did you observe?
- How did you respond?
So what?
- What was the immediate impact or effect on you and the others participating in the online conversation?
- Was there a longer-term (a day or a week) impact or effect, and, if so, what was it?
- How did you feel?
Now what?
- If the same situation happened again in the future, what would you do differently?
- Is there any follow up required (training, guidance, etc.)?
Discussion
If you would like to know more about reflection, the Infed website has some useful sections.
Now continue to Session 2 Preparing to be a facilitator.