7.4 Project log

The raw skills of reflection are often absent or under-rehearsed in students.

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This bundle initiates reflective activity at project outset, and maintains it throughout.

The way it works is to make a diary (or log) a deliverable of the project. Use the content of the log of the immediately preceding week(s) as the agenda paper for supervisory meetings, thus requiring the student to reflect in conversation on what is being done. Furthermore, when the final report is written, the diary over a period of time should illustrate the scale and nature of achievement, and provides hard data for reflection on what has (and has not) been conducted.

The same idea can work just as well in group projects. A decision needs to be taken on whether there is one log for the group, or a number of individual logs, or a hybrid of the two approaches.

The scale of credit allocated to the log need not be great, since most credit will be won for achievements made whose progress it records. The credit does need to be sufficient to ensure the exercise is taken seriously.

It works better when there are clear intermediate milestones of the project that provoke explicit reflective recording.

It doesn't work if students see the log as an overhead on the project

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So: catalyse reflection by requiring it to be recorded.