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Thursday 16th July 2009 10:41 am
Reflection Deficit Disorder
Project helps learners handle the flood of information at their disposal.
By Kevin Denney
In designing an electronic learning record at IIT’s Institute of Design, we identified four stages of learning in informal spaces. Learners create, gather, share, and reflect. Unfortunately, the latter, reflection, is often short-shifted.
In the first three modes, learners have access to a huge number of tools and content. The sources are endless for creating new learning, gathering content, and sharing what you’ve learned. In fact, this proliferation of tools to create, gather, and share has created a fire hose of information about any given topic. However, there are few tools to help the learner reflect.
My colleague Ash Bhoopathy calls this situation “reflection deficit disorder,” or RDD. As more tools and content sources come on line, RDD becomes more acute. This opens up an opportunity to create tools that help learners reflect on what they’ve learned, how they learn, and what they should do next to achieve their goals.
To address RDD we have designed a system that helps learners track their learning over time, plan how they intend to learn in the future, and compare their progress against those who share the same interest.
The Electronic Learning Record is a research initiative supported by the MacArthur Foundation that explores how kids can benefit from creating a portfolio of their own learning experiences, and from reflecting upon and assessing their own learning.
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