Learning Through Reflection

I’ve been reading a good deal about the importance of reflection in a learning experience.  No I’m not talking about learning while looking at yourself in the mirror, although that might be quite useful if you’re preparing to speak to a crowd.  No, the reflection I’m talking about involves taking time during a learning experience to reflect back, synthesize and evaluate what you are learning.

Turns out this is a key part of learning retention.  And in our age of increasingly limited attention spans, looks like that reflection activity needs to be set at greater frequency.

Brain science tells us that in order to keep the information we learn, we have to link or connect it to memories already stored.  Reflection is a tool that helps drive this effort of linking or associating the current experience to past memories.  To put it another way, in reflecting, our mind must travel through our past to make sense of the present.

John Dewey’s famous quote on reflection says “We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience.”

So in the corporate world where instructional designers are increasingly pressured to offer training in shorter timeframes, how do you incorporate reflection?

I recently wrote a blog on BEST2 Learning which among other things proposes the value of blended learning.  Because this model spreads out the learning experiences across a longer period of time than traditional single classroom training or eLearning, you have greater opportunities to incorporate reflective activities in between the learning experiences.

Specific reflection activities you might want to try are a mix of group questions for discussions and also questions to reflect on individually.  There’s value in both methods.

A paper published by the Havard Business School in March 2014 described the results of several studies investigating the significance and value of learning by reflection.  The authors, Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and Bradley Staats, concluded that

• Reflection builds one’s confidence in the ability to achieve a goal (i.e., self-efficacy), which in turn translates into higher rates of learning.
• Learning generated by coupling practice with reflection will be greater than learning generated by the accumulation of additional practice alone.

In other words, if you are learning to speak effectively in front of others, practice is key, but only to a certain point.  You must also take time to reflect on your practice and evaluate what you’ve learned.  This will help build your confidence level and prepare you better than practice alone.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to watch yourself speak in front of a mirror too.

And don’t forget to take time to reflect on what I’ve written!