Here are some concrete and specific suggestions for producing a persuasive learning reflection.

reflecting

First, begin by thinking about relevant things you might have learned as you participated in English 2223, and specific situations or occasions on which you earned them. Here are some of the things I think this course offers you the opportunity to learn something about:

• what I can or should do in reading a script
• ways in which scripts are presented and organized
• differences between live theatre and other art forms (novels, movies, television)
• how knowledge about the playwright can affect the experience of reading or seeing a play
• how to find out about things like plays, playwrights, and theatres, and what kinds of things are out there to be found
• how knowledge of the theatrical tradition can affect the experience of reading or seeing a play
• how having read the script can affect the experience of a production
• how physical context a piece is performed in can affect the experience
• the range of forms that theatre can take
• how an audience member's pre-existing ideas and values can shape her experience
• possible methods of organizing a production
• challenges entailed in moving from script to production
• choices directors make
• choices actors make

Here's another way to help you think about your learning: where, and when, and under what circumstances might your learning have occurred? Here are some possibilities:

• reading a script
• researching a play
• editing a playgoer's companion
• a presentation of a wiki in class
• something another student said in class
• something Russ said in class
• reading a playgoer's companion
• reading someone else's learning journal
• writing (or reading) a reflection on reading a script
• writing (or reading) a reflection on attending a play
• attending a production
• reading a prompt
• writing a learning journal entry
• responding to someone else's reflection

writing

And here's the trick: don't think of what you're writing as one document. Think of it as a collection of separate sections, perhaps each with a heading identifying the learning. Say what you learned, say how and where you learned it, and offer some evidence of the change -- for instance, what you thought or believed or understood or wrote before, as contrasted with what you'd do now. You can write the sections separately and simply put them together into one document. It doesn't need to have an introduction, or transitions (and it certainly doesn't need to have any general comments on the course or its organization -- save those for the course evaluation). It can simply be a set of descriptions of learning.

Diversity vs amount

This document doesn't have to be long -- I often say that it can be what you might write in a three-hour exam period, if you were really ready to sit down and write an examination. The most effective strategy is to find a range of examples of your learning, such that they reflect a range of different kinds of learning, and learning that happened in different situations.

How many? It's really a judgment call: One way to judge it is to think about how much you'd write in a midterm exam period. Another is to think in terms of five or six examples of learning, in five or six different situations. For each, your main goal would be to describe your learning in as concrete a way as you can, and explain specifically why the learning has shifted or changed how you think or what you knew or understood coming into the course. Of course, as with any examination, you can't possibly document everything you learned. An examination usually asks questions about specifics, assuming that if a student can answer those, she'd have been able to answer others, too. In this case, though, you get to pick the examples you'd like to be asked about. Pick the ones that you think are most important, and that you can substantiate most convincingly.

For a conventional midterm examination, my expectation is that a student might spend a few hours studying, and an hour or so writing. I suggest you write it using whatever word processor you normally use, and then paste it into your learning journal as the most recent entry, heading it "Learning Synthesis."

discovering

I expect (hope) that you may discover as you work on this that you've learned more than you were aware. I want to give everyone an A -- but I need to have what Othello called "the ocular proof." I need to have evidence that people actually have learned. Please help me with that.