Effects of Prompting in Reflective Learning Tools: Findings from Experimental Field, Lab, and Online Studies

Abstract

Reflective learning is an important type of learning both in formal and informal situations—in school, higher education, at the workplace, and in everyday life. People may benefit from technical support for reflective learning, in particular when supporting each other by reflecting not only upon their own but also upon other people’s problems. We refer to this collective approach where people come together to think about experiences and find solutions to problems as “collaborative reflection.” We present three empirical studies about the effects of prompting in reflective learning tools in such situations where people reflect on others’ issues. In Study 1 we applied a three-stage within-group design in a field experiment, where 39 participants from two organizations received different types of prompts while they used a reflection app. We found that prompts that invited employees to write down possible solutions led to more comprehensive comments on their colleagues’ experiences. In Study 2 we used a three-stage between-group design in a laboratory experiment, where 78 university students were invited to take part in an experiment about the discussion of problems at work or academic studies in online forums. Here we found that short, abstract prompts showed no superiority to a situation without any prompts with respect to quantity or quality of contributions. Finally, Study 3 featured a two-stage between-group design in an online experiment, where 60 participants received either general reflection instructions or detailed instructions about how to reflect on other people’s problems. We could show that detailed reflection instructions supported people in producing more comprehensive comments that included more general advice. The results demonstrate that to increase activity and to improve quality of comments with prompting tools require detailed instructions and specific wording of the prompts.

Balancing the Fluency-Consistency Tradeoff in Collaborative Information Search with a Recommender Approach

“…The model of search through memory (see Figure 2) serves as starting point to specify the notion of an associative hierarchy that we assume to be enacted when users reflect on objects (e.g., problems, Web resources; . The evidence we found for changes in that associative hierarchy lends further evidence to the assumption that reflection triggers an individual learning process (e.g., Renner, Prilla, Cress, & Kimmerle, 2016). This act of "learning-by-reflecting" is stimulated by joint artifacts (e.g., social tags) and thus, contributing to a collaborative search results in a broader fan of topic-related associations and consequently, an increased level of ideational fluency.…”

Software Tools for Supporting Reflection in Design Thinking Projects

“…Although reflection is mostly seen as a fuzzy concept [17], it generally contains activities for collecting experiences, re-assessing them in the faced situation, and deriving learnings for future actions [29]. According to Grushka et al [30], hypotheses are formulated, a stand is taken, and a plan of actions is derived.…”

“…For instance, Prilla [19] propose two main features, namely (1) communities to enable discussion among a group of users and (2) promptings to trigger the participation of collaborative reflection. As another example, Renner et al [15] derive potentials and prototypes that facilitate reflection at work and Renner et al [17] show how tools can be employed for reflective learning. Nonetheless, software support for reflection seems to be in an emerging stage and should be investigated in future studies that, for instance, draw on a theoreticalgrounding of such tools.…”

“…Previous research has determined that asking a group of reflection participants questions facilitates the process of collaborative reflection [18]. Furthermore, it provides guidance on the actual process of reflection [17]. Referring to this study´s context, as a first step, to adequately guide the progress of a design thinking project, an underlying procedure model describing of the main phases to be carried out has to be selected.…”

“…While reflection is primarily seen as an individual activity, some authors emphasize the strong social dimension [17]. If people reflect together, entire teams can be inspired by experiences from others [18], learn from others, obtain feedback, and create ideas that go beyond knowledge of single individuals [15].…”