1. MONITORING
AND
REFLECTING
LEARNING
Pirkko Hyvönen, PhD
Learning and Educational
Technology Research Unit (LET)
30.9.2013 1© pirkko.hyvonen@oulu.fi

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Every day is a learning day.
Recognise it.

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EXPERT PROFILE (let students)
PORTFOLIO (minor subject students)
Is a tool for
 Students fostering learning: thinking and understanding and
making learning path acknowledgeable and visible.
 Teachers for providing information about where the students are
and how to improve teaching.
Students in our education
a) Monitor their experiences; they make perceptions of their
learning and document them. Documents can be in different
form such as photographs, written texts, drawings, figures, video
clips, audio clips or combination of different modes.
b) Write an expert profile five times during two-year programme. In
writing they use collected documentation.

5. AIM
Aim is to
inspire and
activate your
mind and
senses to
monitor, reflect
and document
meaningful
experiences
and learning
from now on.

6. WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN YOU
REFLECT?
Identify, interpret and assess experiences -
monitor, reflect and analyse learning.
Recognise and remember, what
moments/episodes have influenced on
learning
Look backwards, present and future as well.
Become increasingly aware of your learning
moments and of understanding and also
deepen understanding. (Koopmans et al., 2013)
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7. WHY TO REFLECT?
Reflecting is crucial in order to
learn, it promotes and supports
metagognition.
Reflecting through expert profiles
is highly cognitive and
metacognitive process and
requires reflecting strategies.
”Trajectories towards expertise
are domain specific and must be
documented and then used
within instructional contexts to
promote knowledge transition.”
(Lajoie, 2003)  expert profiles
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How to learn to be effective in
identifying, interpreting and
assessing experiences -monitoring,
reflecting and analysing of learning?

8. Reflecting is a tool to construct
”the whole picture”, to
comprehend the all entity.
”Making sense of a complex
system should require that a
person construct a network of
concepts and principles… that
represents key phenomena and
their relationships.” (Hmelo-Silver
& Green Pfeffer, 2004)
Expert’s knowledge is organised
as patterns and is better for use
in performances (eg., Glaser,
1990)
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REFLECTING AND LEARNING EXPERTISE
Experts are at something; path towards
expertise is not linear. (Lajoie, 2003)

9. WHAT TO MONITOR?
 Understanding theories: self-
regulation and collaboration,
expertise, technology-
enhanced learning
 Understanding how to put
theories into practice
 Ability to explain practice by
theoretical reasoning (cf. Barnett
& Koslowsky, 2002)
 Ability to describe learning
steategies
 Assessing learning from solo
and collaborative perspective
 Expert in learning and
educational technology
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10. WHAT TO MONITOR?
 Meaningfulness of learning experiences
 Error competence and learning from errors (Hetzner et al., 2013)
 Positive experiences first, then problematic (Janssen et al., 2008)
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11. WHAT TO MONITOR?
 Learning strategies
 Creativity and playfulness
 Affective experiences (reasons behind and impacts for)
 Athmosphere, psychologically safe?
 Lack of knowledge?
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12. (Sobral, 2000)
Results
The results showed that 81% of the students had an increase in scores
for reflection-in-learning between the beginning and the end of a course.
At the end of the course, the level of reflection-in-learning was
significantly associated with self-perceived competence for self-regulated
learning and with the meaningfulness of the learning experience. In the
following term, students who had high reflection-in-learning scores at the
end of the course had higher grade-point averages and greater self-
reported diagnostic ability in comparison with those with low scores.
Conclusions
There was some evidence of an improved quality of reflection as the
students strive for some control of learning. Overall, the findings support
the idea that a greater effort at reflection is associated with a more
positive learning experience. They also suggest that reflection-in-learning
is related to readiness for self-regulation of learning and may be
conducive to enhanced diagnostic ability. In conclusion, measuring
reflection-in-learning may be a useful tool in the appraisal of medical
students’ learning profiles.
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13. HOW TO START TO WRITE EXPERT PROFILE?
Review your previous studies/courses and previous expert profiles
Read the writing assigment
Scetch main points and relations with them
 Concept map
 SWOT analysis
 Etc.
Make a presentation about your ideas: what to take into account when
starting to figure out expert profile?
- Creative collaboration
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14. REFERENCES
Barnett, S.M. & Koslowsky, B. (2002). Adaptive expertise: Effects of
type of experience and the level of theoretical understanding it
generates. Thinking and Reasoning, 8(4), 237-267.
Hmelo-Silver, C.E. & Green Pfeffer, M. (2004). Comparing expert and
novice understanding of a complex system from the perspective of
structures, behaviors, and funktions. Cognitive Science, 28, 127-138.
Janssen, F., de Hullu, E., & Tigelaar, D. (2008). Positive experiences
as input for reflection by student teachers. Teachers and Teaching:
Theory and Practice, 14(2), 115-127.
Lajoie, S.P. (2003). Transitions and trajectories for studies of
expertise. Educational Researcher, 32(8), 21-25.
Sobral (2000). An appraisal of medical students’ reflection-in-
learning. Medical Education, 34: 182–187. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-
2923.2000.00473.x
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