I’m just finishing up facilitating an online Field Experience course. In this class, students who were actively engaged in supervised human service field experiences kept track of their hours, reflected on their experience in weekly journals, read relevant text materials, and participated in discussion forums all in an effort to help them get the most out of their field experience. This was a 15-week class, longer than most online classes I’ve taught, and I really want to go out with a bang. Since self-reflection was such an important part of our work together, I want to end this class on that note.

Below you will find a great list of reflective questions to pose to students at the end of the class. It’s definitely a better set of questions than what they would get from a standardized course evaluation. I thought I would share it with you all, since I know many of you are finishing up for the Spring semester and perhaps looking for a way to help your students round out their experience with you. Answers to these questions would also be very helpful for the instructor – getting into the heads of our learners can certainly help guide our approach.

1. Has your approach to this subject changed during this course or compared to previous courses? If yes, how?
2. Have your attitudes or feelings about this subject changed? What were they before vs. now?
3. What are you inspired to do, now that this class is over?
4. How do you feel you performed in this course?
5. What would you do differently if you had a chance to do this all over again?
6. How do you feel the collaborative learning approach worked in this course?
7. Do you have any suggestions for improving class procedures?
8. What else would you like to add that I did not ask?

This would make a great discussion forum prompt for the last week of the class. Or maybe it would fit nicely in the general “water cooler” forum, if you have one.

How do you end your classes? What are some ways you have found to promote self-reflection among your students? We’d love to know! Please comment below.