Frontiers in Higher Education Research Seminar
Center for Teaching & Learning This seminar series highlights original research in college-level learning and instruction. Multidisciplinary in scope, each seminar addresses the broad themes of our work as instructors, including the cognitive processes by which students learn, and the classroom context in which they do so.
All seminars are free and open to the public. Presentations will be followed by a Q&A session and opportunities for discussion.
Giovanna Scalone, PhD
Research Scientist, HCDE Reflection is a form of thinking where one makes meaning of past events as preparation for future engagements. Educators use many activities to help their students reflect on and improve their learning, but few frameworks exist to characterize the choices available in designing such activities. In this talk, Dr. Scalone explores four dimensions of variation that emerge from reflection activities used by engineering educators: explicitness, customization, guidance, and accountability. Each dimension exists on a continuum that ranges from low to high, creating a large design space that allows educators to articulate their rationale for using reflection activities, foreground decisions about the type and structure of the activity, draw attention to potential positive and negative consequences of the activity, and connect to theories of learning. Dr. Scalone shows how these dimensions of variation can be used to design effective reflection activities in engineering and beyond. Giovanna Scalone is a research associate at the Center for Engineering Learning and Teaching (CELT) in the UW Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering. Her research emphasizes the social foundations of learning in both STEM informal and formal learning environments with a focus on agency, meaning-making and identity development. |