You should keep a reflective journal throughout this module. We recommend that you keep this on WordPress through password-protected posts. If you would prefer an offline format, however, you can use your home computer or even an old fashioned paper notebook! Either way this is your personal record and we will not ask to see the diary at any point. You will be asked to refer to your entries, though, in seminar activities and in your second assignment.
Whenever you make an entry, try to write something under each of these headings, using the prompts and the figure below to help guide you.
- Concrete Experience: What happened? What did you do?
- Reflective Observation: How did it feel? Why do you think it happened this way? What could have been different?
- Abstract Conceptualisation: What did you learn? What does this tell you about community engagement/the relationship between theory and practice? Can you use what you have learned elsewhere on your course to help you understand this experience?
- Active Experimentation: What will you take forward from this experience? What will you do differently? How will you evaluate this?
These are stages from Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle, which you will be studying on this module. This model is illustrated in the figure below.
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle
Reference
Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and Development. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
