Designing Reflective Practice in the Context of OER-based e-Learning

Much is said about the importance of reflective practice especially in the professions. Yet much of what happens as part of reflective practice in the professions such as teaching is most of the time left to chance. Reflective practice allows practitioners to see the link between theory and practice by thoughtfully considering their own experiences, and applying knowledge to practice. In this paper we argue that for reflective practice to be meaningful and useful to professionals, it should be carefully designed with appropriate structure and guidance. We discuss how this was achieved by being pro-active about promoting and nurturing reflective practice within the context of a professional development program with Sri Lankan educators on OER (Open Educational Resources)-based e-Learning, and how it supported fostering Open Educational Practices (OEP). The OER-integrated online learning experience was designed with various strategies adopted to enhance reflection ‘in’ and ‘on’ action, within a situated learning pedagogical design – Scenariobased learning (SBL). Content analysis of the qualitative data mainly gathered through participants’ self-reflections, supplemented with course team members’ reflections, focus group interviews and the open-ended questions in questionnaire surveys, revealed that a scenario-based approach to learning incorporating authentic learning activities and assessment tasks, such as concept mapping, online discussions, reflective journal writing, and rubric-based feedback on assessment tasks, all helped scaffold participants' approach to reflective practice. Results show that these strategies that were adopted enhanced their critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative learning as well as self-esteem, also indicating a shift towards OEP. We conclude that careful design of the learning experiences is critical in promoting and supporting reflective practice among educators, and the use of such strategies in the design of OER-based e-Learning


Introduction
The significance of reflection and reflective practice in professional development is a much discussed subject.Reflection allows professionals to monitor and self-regulate their practices by thoughtfully thinking about their own actions and experiences, seeing the link between theory and practice and applying such knowledge into practice.Such reflective practice is a key to progressive development of professionals that enables them to become reflective practitioners.Yet, much of what happens as part of reflective practice in the professions such as teaching is most of the time left to chance.In this paper we argue that for reflective practice to be meaningful and useful to professionals, it should be carefully designed with appropriate structure and guidance.We discuss how this was achieved by being pro-active about promoting and nurturing reflective practice within the context of a professional development program with Sri Lankan educators on OER (Open Educational Resources)-based e-Learning, and how it supported fostering Open Educational Practices (OEP).

Reflective Practice in Professional Development
Reflection is a form of mental process, thinking about what we have done, learned and experienced, which is used to fulfil a purpose or to achieve some anticipated outcome (Moon, 2005;Moon, 1999).Reflective practice becomes a key strategy for self-improvement in a professional setting, as it involves critical selfanalysis in which individuals thoughtfully consider their own experiences in applying knowledge to practice (Schön, 1983;1987).Hence, it is a very productive process leading to great self-awareness of individuals by identifying practices that have worked well as well as areas for improvement as a step towards positive changes in their practices both in personal and professional contexts.A number of models on reflective practice that have been presented over the years attempts to explain how theory is linked to practice through reflection.For instance the Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, 1984) illustrates an iterative cycle of four stages-concrete experience; reflection; abstract conceptualisation; and active experimentation, where learning occurs moving between active and reflective modes, emphasizing the significance of reflecting upon the experience for learning to happen.Similarly, the 'Learning by Doing' model (Gibbs, 1988) provides some key points in development, especially description, evaluation, analysis and action, encouraging the use of critical reflection in converting new learning and knowledge into action and change.
The significance of reflective practice in the teaching profession has been widely discussed and wellresearched.While reflection is a form of mental processing that is used to fulfil a purpose, reflective learning emphasizes the intention to learn from current or prior experience (Moon, 2013).Through a reflective practice process the insights and learning gained through experiences can be used by the practitioners to continuously learn, grow and develop in and through practice.The notions of 'reflection-inaction', and 'reflection-on-action' (Schön, 1983) allows practitioners to engage in a process of continuous learning through critical reflection.Donald Schön's (1983) model focuses on reflective practice as a means for professional growth and on the role of the reflective practitioners in terms of two aspects -learning to reflect in action (RIA) and reflect on action (ROA) (Mung, 2012).RIA is 'thinking on your feet' or reflecting while engaging in an action, while ROA is 'looking back' or reflecting after an action or an experience (Schön, 1983).RIA allows practitioners to constantly be aware and monitor one's own actions and make changes as required during the experience itself, while generating new understandings of the situation.However, this will be triggered with a 'surprise':

Reflection 'in' action and Reflection 'on' action
The practitioner allows himself to experience surprise, puzzlement, or confusion in a situation which he finds uncertain or unique.He reflects on the phenomenon before him, and on the prior understandings which have been implicit in his behaviour.(Schön, 1983, p.68) ROA, on the other hand, is a post-action reflection which allows analyzing and evaluating the experience that will help practitioners to plan and improve their next course of action.These two notions, RIA and ROA are complementary in having a clear link or relationship between them, and together, playing a significant role in improving teaching-learning practices.This provides a useful framework to plan strategies to support reflective practice in professions (Mung, 2012).
The Reflection in Action and Reflection on Action framework (Schön, 1983) provided guidance in the development of a professional development course on OER-based e-Learning at OUSL, for practitioners in the higher education setting, where the learning experiences were carefully designed in a structured manner, including specific strategies to support reflective practice among them.

Design and development of the OEReL online course
The OER-based e-Learning (OEReL) developed at OUSL is an adaptation of a fully online professional development course of CEMCA.This course was developed based on the Scenario-based (SBL) pedagogical approach (Naidu, 2010).It used an innovative approach to learning experience design, a 'learning engine' for effective, efficient and engaging OER-integrated e-learning (Naidu & Karunanayaka, 2014).Integration of OER across the five modules of the course was at different levels shifting from a focus on OER to OEP (see Karunanayaka, Naidu, Rajendra & Ratnayake, 2015 for details).The learning design included an authentic learning scenario that challenged participants to engage in learning activities leading to assessment tasks with the support of learning resources.Each assignment consisted of three sections: an individual task; group discussion forum; and a self-reflection.The participants were provided clear guidelines to write a short reflection on their learning experience, as shown in Fig. 1.In addition, an assessment rubric used to assess and provide feedback to their reflections (see Fig. 2) was also shared with the participants.Within the learning experiences designed in each of the modules, the participants were given various opportunities to reflect 'in' action and reflect 'on' action (Schön, 1983).Table 1 provides a summary of different aspects in the course design adopted to facilitate and promote reflective practice among participants during their learning process.
Table 1: Strategies adopted in the course design to facilitate reflective practice A description of a learning experience in one module is presented in Table 2 as an example to illustrate how different strategies were employed within the SBL pedagogical design to support reflective practice.As shown in the above example, the SBL design initially situated the participants in a challenging situation in an authentic learning scenario where they were activated with a goal to achieve.This made it mandatory for them to reflect 'in' action in order to move forward-analyze the prevailing 'puzzling' or 'confusing' phenomenon based on their prior experiences, and also to think ahead about the actions required by them to face this challenge.Further, there was a sequence of learning activities that emerged from the scenario leading to the assessment tasks.These supported participants to reflect 'ín' while 'experimenting' with their actions, reviewing, revising and 'changing' their work while developing 'new understandings' during the process.Also these allowed them to reflect 'on' their actions-to think at the end of each of the activities, reflecting once each task is completed, and plan for future actions.

Research Design and Research Questions
The aim of this study was to explore how a systematic design of reflective practice within the context of a professional development online course on OER-based e-Learning, impacted promoting and supporting reflective practice among educators and fostering their adoption of OEP.A case study approach, which is an in-depth investigation of a single unit of study through examining first-hand experiences of individuals in a real life context (Yin, 2003;Bogdan & Biklen, 1998) was adopted as the research design.
The following research questions were addressed in the case study:  What is the effect of the scenario-based pedagogical design in promoting reflective practice among educators? How and to what extent the strategies adopted within the course design enhanced reflection 'in' action and reflection 'on' action? What challenges were faced by the educators in their reflective practice process? What are the impacts of the learning experience design integrated with reflective practice, on educators?

Participants
A group of 35 educators at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) constituting 18 females (51%) and 17 males (49%) who enrolled in the OEReL course were the participants of the study.Table 3 presents a summary of the participant profile.While a majority of the participants (62.8%) were with less than 10 years of experience in the higher education system, they were well-qualified academics with either PhDs or MPhils (45.7%) and with other post graduate qualifications (28.6%).Yet, the number of active participants gradually decreased during the course of study and finally only 10 academics (29%) successfully completed all five modules in the course.

Collection and analysis of data
The key data collection strategy adopted for this study was participants' self-reflections written at the end of each learning experience.This was supplemented with course team members' reflections, focus group interviews and the open-ended questions in learning experience questionnaire surveys.A simple coding system developed based on the conceptual framework of reflection 'in' action and reflection 'on' action (Schon, 1983), was adopted for the content analysis of qualitative data, as show in Table 4. Chunks of reflective statements obtained from the qualitative data were considered as 'units of analyses.
After an initial analysis on RIA and ROA based on this coding system, a detailed analysis was conducted to identify specific strategies supported, challenges faced and impacts related to the reflective practice process.

What is the effect of the scenario-based pedagogical design in promoting reflective practice among educators?
The course team members' and the participants' reflections were analyzed to find out the effect of SBL design in promoting reflective practice.Some sample quotes are provided in Table 5.As evident by the above quotes, the SBL pedagogical design had supported integration of strategies to promote reflective practice, supporting both RIA [P,E,R,N] and ROA [AN,CH,IM,AP] among the participants.Situating them in an authentic 'scenario' with a challenge compelled participants to reflect 'in' actionto analyze the prevailing situation while experiencing it, and think ahead about the actions required by them, based on their prior experiences.Further, the sequence of learning activities that emerged from the scenario too have motivated participants to reflect 'ín' while experimenting with their actions, reviewing and revising their work and developing new understandings during the process, and leading to the completion of assessment tasks.These also supported them to reflect 'on' their actionsto think through each of the activities and reflecting once the assessment tasks are completed, and plan for future actions.
The SBL design which is a model based on situated learning principles (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989) and grounded in the constructivist theory of learning (Duffy & Jonnasen, 1991), allowed immersing participants in real life challenging situations that prompted RIA.Further, the learning scenario started with a precipitating event that 'triggered' them engaging in a sequence of activities to address the problem (Naidu, 2010) which also necessitated RIA in each step to move forward, as well as ROA at the culmination, to make use of that experience for the future.The 'learning engine' framework (Naidu & Karunanayaka, 2014) adopted to develop such learning experiences within the SBL approach was very accommodating to design and integrate specific strategies in a structured manner to promote RIA and ROA among the participants.

How and to what extent the strategies adopted within the course design enhanced reflection 'in' and reflection 'on' action?
Participants The peer-facilitated discussion forums were developed based on key design principles of eLearning (Salmon, 2000) that encouraged participants to collaboratively construct knowledge through social negotiation and self-regulation, and at the same time supporting reflective practice.These examples reveal that specific strategies included within the learning experience such as concept mapping, quizzes, and online discussions have all helped scaffold participants' approach to reflective practice.

What challenges were faced by the educators in the reflective practice process?
Despite the various strategies adopted attempting to encourage participants continuously engage in reflective practice, numerous challenges have affected their reflecting process, as summarized in Table 6.(Schon, 1983).The novelty of the content (eg.OER and related concepts), certain activities (eg.Concept mapping, SWOT Analysis) as well as the need to critically review of each other's work, provide constructive criticisms at the forums required substantial time.Hence, the time allocated to engage in multiple tasks with the stipulated deadlines was claimed as insufficient by the participants.The complex nature of the activities which required mostly higher order cognitive skills such as critical thinking, analytical thinking, reflective thinking and creativity would have resulted in increasing the cognitive load (Sweller, 1988) of the participants.

Fig. 1 :
Fig. 1: Guidelines provided for participants to write self-reflections

Table 2 :
An Example of Learning Scenario, Learning Activities & Assessment Tasks in Module 1

Table 4 :
Coding system adopted for the content analysis of qualitative data

Table 5 :
Sample quotes on the effect of the SBL design on reflective practiceQuote from a course team member's reflections: … This is the first time that I was involved in designing SBL for facilitating learning…It gave me an opportunity to realize when designing SBL how important that one should look into the learning outcomes and identify what the students should achieve on completion, and then how one should structure the scenario…trigger discussion and…drive into collaborative learning...I noticed…that students were very constructive and open in writing their reflection for each assignment…I strongly believe that when students reflects on their assignments they might have found their gaps and would have helped them to rectify when writing the next assignment… Quote from a participant's reflections:I really liked the SBL design…This was something new to me.[AN]…Each module was contextualized and situated in an authentic setting with tasks requiring us to engage in a number of activities which centered on designing an OER based-e-learning course in our related field.[P]…Thereal life activities such as writing the learning outcomes, developing the learning scenarios and the activities as well as designing the assessment tasks to fit the learning outcomes were challenging yet motivating.
[E][R]… The experience I gained from engaging in these tasks was invaluable.[N][IM]…Ihave since given greater attention to ensuring that the assessment tasks I select are in keeping with the learning outcomes…[AP] ' feedback on specific strategies used in each module revealed how and to what extent the different strategies have affected their reflective practices.Some examples are given below.…Igot a paper and drew the concept map providing the relationships one by one.At the beginning it was a total mess.I drew again and again.[E]…ThenI started to go through my group members maps and tried to comment on them.[R]…Theexercise enlightened me on Focal concepts, the relationships, benefits, impacts.[N]…Aftercompleting the map, I realized that I missed to add several examples and also some pictures.[AN]More reading would help me to do a better job…in future…[AP] Online quiz on licence types: (Module 3) I tried the quiz before reading to check my prior knowledge of license types.[P]I found that while I had an idea of what the terms meant when it came to actually indicating the correct combinations I failed miserably.[E] Happily, after the readings I got just one type wrong [R] …that was an achievement.[IM] It was interesting to note the patterns of reflective practice of both RIA [P, E, R, N] and ROA [AN, CH, IM, AP] within the strategies, as depicted by the coded quotes of participants.Especially, the discussion forum activities included in all modules have played a key role in supporting reflective learning of participants, as evident by the coded quotes given below.…Even though the learning may look somewhat simple and small the richness of information available within it could be much deeper and richer.[AN] The postings...in the discussion forum further emphasized this.[AN]…It is really an exhilarating experience.[AN].Here I found different persons looking at things from different viewpoints and bringing out the richness in the lesson material.[AN]I could not participate in discussions and post my assignments to get peer feedback.[CH]…However, I followed all the discussion posts, posted by others and got some valuable insights in drafting my assignment.[R] [N] This is the beauty of online learning, having all discussions posts stored and can be retrieved even at a later stage.[AN]...I also felt the value of communication and collaboration in an elearning situation which is crucial for meaningful learning.[IM]

Table 6 :
Key challenges faced by participants to engage in reflective practiceMost of the knowledge construction was handled by peers… It would have been better if there were more interactions by the facilitators... Time constraint was a common issue faced by all participants who were full time academics.Reflection essentially needs time to think, either 'on your feet' (RIA) as well as 'looking back' (ROA)