Reflective Learning Journals in Computer Science: The Student Experience

This paper is centred on undergraduate students enrolled on a BSc in IT programme in Dublin, Ireland, with a view to enhancing student engagement in learning through reflexivity. Reflective learning places the emphasis on the self as the source of learning and is inherently an individual and interactive process. Boud et al. (1985) state that reflection is an important human activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate it. It is this working with experience that is important in learning. The authors developed and evaluated a reflective learning journal tool that was used to capture the reflective learning processes within students studying computer programming, a subject known to present significant learning barriers for 1st year BSc computing students. In addition, existing student study habit behaviours were investigated to determine which approaches, materials and sources they had a preference for, to further shape the delivery of module content in the future.