The first thing I do is go through and delete comments on the course itself, or the professor, which don't in fact detail any learning on the part of the writer. I understand, of course, that in many cases these are a way to get started writing, but usually they can be edited out once you've got rolling. I cross out general expressions of enthusiasm about how much the writer has learned or how hard she's worked. I cross out summaries of what the writer has done unless they are specifically tied to learning.

Evaluating and improving your own reflection

The first step in evaluating your own learning reflection is this: make a copy of it for yourself. Copy the text from your posting on the forum, and paste into a new editing window on your computer. Now, do to it what I've said above. Just mark and delete everything that matches what I've just described.

Then, when I'm reading, I go through and look for references to specifics -- to particular events, readings, statements, activities. I also look for any reference to a specific learning -- some particular thing the writer now can do, or knows, or understands, or sees the connection between. I especially look for places where those two are connected: where a particular event, for instance (reading something, hearing something, seeing something), gives rise to a specific new understanding. And then, in each case, I look for evidence that that new understanding actually exists, rather than merely being stated. In the first stages of this process I usually don't find many. Read your text, looking for that sort of thing. Make it clearer when you find it.

Finally, go through your reflection looking for those places, and add that "for example." In other words, where you can, exemplify the general learning you said had happened. If you can't, take it out.

Now you have a reflection which comes rather closer than your first one to making a strong case for your learning. Save it.

A little help from your friends

Now go through and read a dozen or so of the postings available on the midterm reflections forum (they're mostly not very long, so a dozen should be doable fairly quickly). Watch for passages in those other reflections that describe kinds of learning that you didn't think of, but which you could have written about it you'd thought of them. At this point in the year, there may not be many, but you should be able to find some. Go back to your own reflection and write about them.

Reread the whole thing; run a spell checker on it.

Now, finally, copy and paste the whole works into a "Reply" to your original document. Do this all before class time on Thursday.

I should make clear that you don't have to revise your learning reflection (or, in fact, do one at all); but if you do, the new one will be treated as the final product.