Using reflective learning journals to improve students learning and awareness. Lars Peter Jensen Automation and Control, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Fredrik Bajers Vej 7C, 9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark (
[email protected], http://es.aau.dk/staff/lpj, +45 9940 8740)
Abstract This paper addresses the problem of mixing Danish engineering students having 3 years of experience with project work in teams (PBL setting at Aalborg University), with foreign students starting on Master Engineering educations with close to zero PBL experience. The first semester the foreign students are working in teams together and given special help to develop team and project work skills. When Danish and foreign students are grouped in mixed teams on the 2nd semester, still the Danish students are experts in project work and they are not familiar with taking in less skilled newcomers. A new course called Professional Procedures in a Globalized World is established for Danish 1st semester Master students in Electronics and IT, with a double purpose of both developing the team work and intercultural skills further and restart the students reflection and talking about how they actually work together, in order to prepare them to take in foreign students on the 2nd semester. To secure the latter part and the learning goal the students have to write an individual learning journal. The setup of the course and the learning journals is described, and the learning outcome discussed using examples from the learning journals, proving that the students reach the learning goals of the course being able to discuss a more professional approach to their team work and they plan how to help foreigners entering their team. Keywords: Intercultural learning, Reflective learning journal, Professional Team work
1. INTRODUCTION Since Aalborg University (AAU) was started it has been using an educational model, where Problem Based Learning is the turning point. Each semester the students on the Engineering Educations form groups/teams of 36 persons, which uses half of the study time within the semester to solve and document a real-world engineering problem. Working with problems gives the students a very deep learning of the subjects they study, but also very good problem solving skills and team work competencies that are highly recommended by the Danish companies. An important aspect of the first year of the education, is a course where the students gets tools and tricks for good communication, collaboration, learning and project management (CLP) [1]. Globalisation of studies is growing fast and AAU has like many other universities using PBL struggled to improve foreign student’s integration in the already established communities of practice among the Danish students being very familiar with the PBL environment and almost experts in project work in teams and written documentation in project reports. On the first semester of the master education in Electronics and IT, their projects change towards research projects and they have to document the results in a scientific paper as well as preparing and presenting a poster. Foreign student starting on a Master education at Aalborg University are mostly newcomers to the PBL environment and on their first semester they have to learn how to study in this environment. To give this issue special notification all the foreign students studying electronics and IT on Master level solve projects in mixed foreign teams, and they are given special courses e.g. CLP to help their progress of mastering project work in teams.
Being experts in the PBL environment Danish students no longer discuss how they plan their projects and Cooperation, and they find it hard to remember and talk about it when they are mixed with foreign students on the 2nd semester. In order to prepare Danish students to take in foreign newcomers, a new course named Professional Procedures in a Globalized World (PTW) was established in the autumn semester 2007 (1st semester master level) with the purpose: To resume students focus on team work, by introducing professional procedures on project management and teambuilding/work in a Globalized world.
2. COURSE SETUP The PTW course is a one ECTS course with five lectures covering the following subjects: Project management, Management of changes in organisation, Intercultural competencies, Learning, Prevention of stress. To provoke new reflections on the students past experience’s with the subjects, each student had to write a personal portfolio or learning journal documenting their experiences and ability to reflect upon them. These documents were also used as a written examination of the course (pass/no pass). To give the students the freedom of developing their own portfolios, no specific guidelines of how to write them were given, but for each lecture some advice of how the students could write and reflect on the subject were suggested. After the first lecture the students found it difficult to get started with the writing and the lecturer wrote and published his own portfolio on the home page of the course as an example of how to do it. The students found that very helpful and most of them started writing, but in their own style. Right after the last lecture the students were given the opportunity to hand in a first version of their portfolios and the lecturer commented those (74% used the opportunity) giving advices for the final version that should be handed in at the end of the project period. The following paragraphs will present the content and setup of each lecture in more details as well as the advices for the portfolio. 2.1 Project management The subject for the first lecture of the course was project management, relating the project work in teams at Aalborg University to real world engineering projects in companies, discussing differences and similarities when going from using projects and teams with a learning purpose to the use of projects to solve actual problems and/or develop new products or systems in cross disciplinary and intercultural professional teams in companies. In the lecture a model were used to explain the details about projects in companies. The model had five elements: The task, Management of the project, Surroundings, Stakeholders and Resources. The different tasks of the project manager were given special attention and the organisational settings of projects and the project team in organisation were also explained. Adizes [3] ideas and findings about Management styles were presented and the students were advised to discuss Adizes ideas about management teams in their own project teams and undertake Adizes managements style test, comparing the individual results to discuss whether their team had the right potentials for management or they were risking mismanagement. The students were advised to use both experiences from their project work at the University and earlier experiences from their personal life in their personal portfolio, and also to reflect on the results of the Adizes test and the discussion of it in their team. 2.2 Intercultural competencies The second lecture was about intercultural competencies and for this purpose the Danish students were mixed with the new foreign students just started as newcomers on the first semester of their master study (Electronics and IT) at Aalborg University. Mixing the students established a better platform to discuss cultural differences and at the same time the students got an opportunity to know each others background better before they had to work in mixed groups the next semester. The lecturer this time has a background as foreign newcomer to studying in a PBL setup in Denmark, and she used a combination of lecturing, discussions and small exercises in mixed groups and plenary discussions and summing up to present and discuss the following subjects: meeting new cultures – shocks and stereotypes, intercultural communication, cultural awareness in multicultural teams, intercultural competencies in engineering. A very personal example from the lectures own experience coming from a Chinese educational system to Danish PBL environment were very convincing for the students to be aware of how important understanding of culture and cultural differences is for multicultural teams to communicate and work together.
Advices for the portfolio were to describe personal experiences meeting other cultures, e.g. on holiday and to reflect on what could be learned from these meetings. Based on experience and the outcome of the lecture the student was also advised to reflect on how to prepare for meeting other cultures and especially for working together with foreigners on the next semester in culturally mixed teams. 2.3 Management of changes in organisations This lecture looked deep into a change process in a company, not only to learn about how it is managed and controlled and what actually happens but also to see how important the company’s culture and its subcultures, and what is done, or most usually not done, to change the subcultures as well, is for a change process to be successful. A brief introduction to the concept of BPR (Business Process Reengineering) [4] were given before a true story of a large scale change process in a Danish company with app. 200 employees were told. Both the methodology of the change agents and the development and results of the 2½ year change process were presented, to give the students a feeling of how professional consultants handle large scale change processes and how different departments and groups of employees react and feel in change processes. The students were advised to describe their own experiences from work place situations in relation to changes and to subcultures in the company and reflect how this had influenced management and cooperation on the job. They were asked to suggest their own ideas about how to handle differences among future colleges in order to improve communication and cooperation. Those students that hadn’t had a job were suggested to describe and reflect on subcultures related to private life, scouts etc. or differences among project teams at the university. 2.4 Learning Awareness of learning, different learning strategies and how one as an individual learn the best is well known to improve peoples learning. This lecture was therefore dedicated to investigate these subjects. Different supplementing theories about learning, Kolb’s learning cycle [5] and Pask’s model for Meta learning [6] were presented. Dr. Richard Felders model of learning styles [7] were presented and discussed and the students were encouraged to undertake Felders learning style inventory after the lecture and discuss the results in their group and reflect on how they could improve their learning. As a part of the lecture the students worked for 20 minutes on an exercise in cross groups identifying strategies for efficient learning and categorizing them in a two dimensional chart according to the level of efficiency for learning in the group and for individually learning. Then they ranked the different strategies multiplying the scores in efficiency on the two axes which gives the highly efficient strategies for both group and individual learning the highest rank in a PBL setting. Advices for the portfolio were to identify the personal learning strategies used until now and reflection on how that matched the personal results of the Felder test of learning styles and maybe suggest how to further develop less used learning dimensions/strategies. 2.5 Prevention of stress Working hard to finish a project on time can easily cause stress in a team, no matter if it is a professional team in a company or it is a group of students at university. This lecture was aimed to help students preventing stress and preparing them for their professional life after finishing their master degree. The students were given a general knowledge of stress and with focus on work based stress a more deeply overview of symptoms, backgrounds and consequences for development of stress in project work and teams. Strategies for handling of stress directly in specific situation were presented together with strategies for prevention of stress in the long run. Handling the impact on stress coming from the team was discussed using a team exercise. After the lecture the students were advised to try some of the free stress tests available on the web and to describe their own experiences with both personal stress and friends or family members having stress. Based on the experiences, the lecture and stress tests the students were advised to reflect on their own ability to cope with stress and make a plan for prevention of it, both directly in specific situations and in the long run.
3. RESULTS
The final version of the portfolios is an excellent documentation for the individual students direct outcome of the course and his or hers ability to reflect on passed experiences. Most of the portfolios were at a high standard and all 49 Students passed. For research purpose the portfolios were marked and most of them got a C, which also was the average mark. There were only one E and two A’s. For this paper example from the two highest ranked portfolios has been chosen to show how far the students can get with their reflections if they have enough different experiences and make an effort in reflecting them. For each subject (lecture) of the course a quote from one or two of the portfolios will be presented and commented in the following paragraphs. Although the quotes comes from the two A portfolios some of them are representative for most of the other portfolios that got a C simply because they didn’t cover all the subjects from the course equally well. 3.1 Project management Quote from [8]: “Before undertaking Adizes test, I considered what I expected from the test results at first. I concluded that I would have a stronger preference towards the administrator and entrepreneur roles. I have always been very structural oriented with all my work. I often write down plans for solving tasks at hand. This helps me get the bigger picture beforehand. I am most satisfied when most details are discussed and evaluated before the real work begins. Chapter 5 will also show that this applies to my learning abilities as well. Regarding the actual project management, I prefer when tasks are properly organized among group members, since the individual responsibilities are clarified. By this I mean, when everyone has a task assigned, they get a responsibility for getting that particular task done before a deadline. The administrative role is not only how I prefer to lead, but also helps me cope with different every-day tasks. This aspect will be further elaborated in chapter 6. Regarding the entrepreneur role, I also have a willingness to explore new possibilities and I think long-termed when developing strategies for different solutions. After the test, I realized I was more of an integrator than the entrepreneur. I still scored highest in having the administrative role. But this actually comes as no surprise to me, since I endeavour to heighten the social life in the group and try to be aware of the relations between the group members. Conflicts can be very destructive for the team work and should be solved when discovered.” This quote shows that the student is able to identify his personal part of the leadership of the team and relate it to Adizes management styles and by taking the test he realizes that he has forgotten his effort as an integrator in the team and reflects on that. This example shows that reflecting on both behaviour and test results might help the students to realise hidden skills. It should be noticed that the student not only reflect on project management but combine that with both learning (Chapter 5 reference) and prevention of stress (chapter 6 reference), thereby making a cross reflection of tree of the course subjects. 3.2 Intercultural competencies Quote from [9]: “From my childhood, in Denmark, I had lots of friends from different countries for example; Danish, Tamil, Bosnian, Afghani, Somali, Vietnams e.g. By spending time with my friends, at their home as well as outdoors, I have learned how to be a part of a new culture and how to interpreted deferent situations. From my multi cultured background I also found out that in some culture including the Tamil it is not well seen to arguing against an elderly person e.g. discussing with your supervisor or teacher or even questioning their saying. From my childhood I was always told to respect and honour an old Tamil / Sanskrit mantra, which states the hierarchy order whom all Tamil must follow, it sound like this: Mather, Pitha, Guru, Thaivam. In English: Mother, Father, Teacher and God. By not submitting or honouring this hierarchy you will be seen as a poorly disciplined and rude person. By having told this mantra since my birth, I have some times in my adulthood had periods of difficulty questioning my teacher or supervisors but the fact that I also was grown up in Danish culture I have learned to manage this problem. To conclude, I say by living side by side in two different cultures I have taught myself how to behave or interpret different situations, regarding dealing with people from different culture and countries. I hope my experience regarding Intercultural Learning will be an advantage when we shall work with foreign students in the coming semesters and as well as in my future working environment.”
This quote from a student that moved to Denmark with his parents when he was a child shows the ability and necessity to adapt to other cultures if one has to function in multicultural groupings. Although the student have been in Denmark for about 15 years it seems as he is continuously adapting and aware of how to behave in multicultural settings, giving an indication of the potential of improvement in intercultural awareness if people just get started gaining knowledge and reflecting on the issue.
3.3 Management of changes in organisations Quote from [8]: “I used to work in the service central of Metax Oil A/S, helping customers with problems at our gas stations as the main task among others. Metax Oil A/S was a subsidiary of the Shell Concern until recently. Now Metax Oil A/S has been converted to a company - that I know work in - independent of Shell that leases the same unmanned gas stations. The process of this company conveyance means a lot of radical changes for the employees affected by this. I think that one the hardest processes is the communication in the hierarchy. The ’workers’ very much need to know what is going on, but sometimes information is held back from the higher layers in the organization for several reasons. This can be very aggravating when facing new changes suddenly appearing, and you have to adjust immediately. Working in the service central and being in touch with the customers was not easy, when you could not answer their questions due to lack of information. Hence, it gives the customer a bad impression of the company. Therefore, I always ask a lot about the status and seek information where I can and pass it on to my co-workers.” More than half of the students have working experiences and have a part time job while they study. A lot of these students have experienced organizational changes and are able to make good reflection on them. This is a typical example of a students experience with a minor change and his reflections on it. He experiences that communication is very often lacking in the change processes and being aware of that will almost certain help the student to become a better leader and change agent. 3.4 Learning Quote from [9]: “When I looked back on my past education, I can remember myself preferring learning by applying or explaining my findings to others, which characterizes an Active Learner e.g. when I was in my early primary school, we were introduced to Pythagoras theorem in math class. I, to begin with, didn' t understand the mathematic theory of it. Later on we went outside in a small group of 3-4 in order to applying this theorem to find the distance from point A to B. By doing and applying this mathematic theorem on practical use, I was able get a better understanding and perspective of how to utilize the theory, which I did not grasp from the class lecture. This was not the only case, each time I was dealing with some theory I would prefer to apply it and see what it does e.g. in a group, this approves, with my test results from PTW lecture, that I am a very strong Active learner. But the down side however is, that I sometimes run into some problems that I haven' t thought about, because of the lack of my ability of being a Reflective learner, who prefer to sit alone and think through what they have just learned. I believe when you sit back and think through what you have just learned you will be well prepared if you are to face an unexpected problem regarding what you have learned. To conclude with I would say there are two learning type that I would try to be better at, and those are Reflective and Sequential learner. My approach to be a more reflective learner is that I will focus on trying to think through an issue before trying to applying it. By doing so I may be able to anticipate a possible problem that may arise and be more prepared when it arises.” This is a typical quote from the portfolios showing that the student is aware of how he learns already, but gaining new knowledge on learning and taking Felders learning style inventory the student reflects very precise about his learning skills and is able to suggest how to improve. 3.5 Prevention of stress Quote from [8]: “When I get too stressed, I am having very much trouble sleeping at night, which might be of some explanation to having a hard time getting up in the morning. When I go to bed, I have not stopped thinking about project or other subjects - like evaluating when recording demos with my band. Other symptoms I experience is having a
hard time concentrating and keeping the overview of what I am working with at the moment. These stress symptoms usually occur around Christmas and start of the summer due to deadlines of the project and reading for exam. At this time writing the portfolio I am also feeling stressed out. I do not have the impression that I am unpleasant to be around when very stressed though. Luckily, there are several methods and approaches to take to prevent getting too stressed. One important for me is organizing things very carefully. Always write down what you have to do. Even the smallest things are to be accounted for. Then afterwards, I can prioritize my tasks and get them done one by one. This helps me concentrating and sleeping more calm at night, since I have them written down and do not have to think about them. Another thing is to make something totally different from the normal. When you have spent many nights writing on your project and starts to lose overview and your concentration, one of the best things, for me, is to take a long walk thinking things through. It also helps a great deal playing music - drums can be an effective way of getting rid of your aggressions. As a final remark, I am of obviously aware of that I am not the only one getting stressed in this study environment. When working in a group, I think it is just as important to be aware of the other member’s stress levels as telling about your own. I do not find it that hard to tell when someone is stressed, and I think it is important to be as helpful as possible in such situations. For example taking care of or helping one with all the small tasks that are hard for the person to cope. These tasks are often causing a great deal stress. Another thing is being tolerant patient when listening to a stressed person and yourself being very concise when talking to the person.” This quote shows that the student is quite familiar with stress and how to cope with it. He is aware that the projects and team work as study form is a stressing environment, but he has also developed some procedures to prevent and handle stress. At the end he makes a very useful reflection on the importance of being aware of other team members stress and try to help them.
4. CONCLUSIONS The results in chapter 3 shows how far the students can get in reflecting the subjects of the course, but that don’t prove that all the students have fulfilled the learning goals of the course. This conclusion will investigate if that is the case using statistics from all the portfolios. A general assessment of the portfolios shows that 85% of the students have used Adizes test and management styles to discuss the management issues of their own team and their personal preferences for management styles. This way most of the students are now able to discuss a more professional view of their own project management than they were before, and due to the reflections they are much more aware of who is doing what in terms of managerial issues and what their own personal strength and contributions are. Intercultural competencies is a subject most of the students found interesting, but only about half of them had personal experiences in the subject, so the reflections were in some cases about subjects taken directly from the lecture and the exercises. This year 25% of the students starting on the Engineering Master Educations in Electronics and IT were foreigners and due to their choice of specialization about 50% of the Danish students had a possibility to be mixed with foreign students on the 2nd semester. In all 60% of the students made specific suggestions in their portfolio on how to take in foreigners, fulfilling one of the aims of the course. The subject on management of organisational changes was mainly addressed by students having personal experiences with the subject or at least with working in an organisation. This covered 73% of the students that showed an ability to see culture in a broader sense than just people from other countries. Learning is not a new subject to the students and the portfolios shows that most of them are aware of how they learn the best, by undertaking Felders learning style inventory once more (they did it on their first Bachelor semester) and reflecting on it now, about 60% actually suggested some improvements to their learning capability. Prevention of stress was not a central issue in fulfilling the overall goal of the course, but intended to help the students cope with stressed situations in their working environment. The portfolios revealed that most of the students had experienced work based stress and that they also had strategies to cope with it. Some of their actions like sports were done for other reasons, but the lecture and their reflections showed that this also could be an efficient prevention of stress in the long run. Based on these findings it seems fair to say that the course and the individual portfolios have developed the team work and intercultural skills further and restarted the students’ reflection and talking about how they actually
work together. Most of the students that have the chance of mixing with foreign students next semester have planned for that and are better prepared to take in foreign students in their team. The students taking the course have then fulfilled its learning goals. The final conclusion of the first run of the PTW course is that it has been helpful for the students fulfilling its learning goals, and for some of the more doubtful or critical (toward the outcome of writing portfolios) students even convincing, which some actually has commented specifically on in the portfolio. Based on that the course will run again this year, updated with suggestions from last years students. References [1] L.P. Jensen, “Using teaching resources to help students develop team and project skills pays off, both in terms of employability and shorter study time”, RCEE, Johor 2005. 2005. s. 192-197. [2] L.P. Jensen, “How do we help students as newcomers to create and develop better communities of practice for learning in a Project based learning environment?”, Experience and Reflection on Active Learning in Engineering Education. 2007. s. 153-160. [3] I. Adizes, “Management/Mismanagement” (2004). [4] N. Glass, “Management Masterclass”, Nicholas Brealey Publishing (1998). [5] D.A. Kolb, ”Experimental Learning. Experience as the source of learning and development,” 1984, Prentice Hall. [6] G. Pask, “Styles and strategies of learning”, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 46 (1976), 128-148. [7] R.M. Felder, Silverman L.K., “Learning and Teaching Styles in Engineering Education,” Engineering Education, 78(7), 1988, p. 674-681 [8] T.D. Rasmussen, “Portfolio based on the PTW-course”, delivered for assessment December 2007, not published. [9] A. Paramanathan, “Personal Portfolio”, delivered for assessment December 2007, not published.
