• Reflection helps you articulate and think about your processes for communication.
• Reflection gives you an opportunity to consider your use of rhetorical elements in
your work.
 For example, content; purpose; broad context as well as the specific situation;
audience; use of pathos, ethos, and logos; organization and supporting
details; use of visuals.
• Reflection helps you identify and consider more productive strategies.
• Planning: What have you learned about the value of planning and revising?
• Time Management: What have you learned about using your time?
• Audience: What have you learned about addressing your audience?
• Rhetorical Triangle: What have you learned about logos, ethos, and pathos?
• Feedback: What have you learned about the value of receiving comments?
• Transformation: What have you learned about transforming written to visual to
oral modes?
• What have you learned about the value of planning and revising?
• How have your ideas and practices about planning changed since the course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
• What have you learned about how you use your time during the process of writing a
paper, creating or selecting visuals, and practicing and giving an oral presentation?
• How have your ideas and practices about time management changed since the
course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
• What have you learned about how you think about and address your audience
during the process of writing a paper, creating or selecting visuals, and practicing
and giving an oral presentation?
• How have your ideas and practices about considering audience changed since the
course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
• What have you learned about logos, ethos, and pathos?
• How have your ideas and practices about logic, about ethics and authority, and
about emotion as part of persuasion changed since the course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
• What have you learned about the value of receiving comments about your
preliminary ideas, before you prepare a full draft?
• How have your ideas and practices related to peer review changed since the
course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
• What have you learned about transforming an argument from a written
mode to a visual mode to an oral mode?
• How have your ideas and practices changed since the course started?
• What do you want to change in the future?
(6 parts to consider)
1. Description: Summarize whether you observed a change (or lack of change)
in your communication processes and products. Don’t evaluate the changes; just
describe it/them.
2. Feelings: Explain how you feel about the changes (or lack of changes). Surprised?
Discouraged? Pleased? Optimistic?
3. Evaluation: Evaluate whether the change (or lack thereof) is, in your opinion, good or
bad (or somewhere in between).
…continued on the next slide
4.
Analysis: Analyze what you think influenced, contributed to, or caused the changes.
Identify the factors that affected your processes and products.
5.
Conclusions: Conclude with a generalization about your overall communication
processes and products. Explain how your experience in this course might be
generalizable to other communication experiences you’ll have.
6.
Personal action plans: Project what you intend to do in the future. Explain how you
plan to modify or extend what you learned in this course.
Model
Description: Summarize
changes in your
processes and products.
Don’t evaluate; just
describe.
Examples—No Details
Examples—Details
I see a change in my writing
process.
My process is different in a few ways.
· I’m now aware that I HAVE a process. I actually plan now.
· I pay more attention to what I’m doing.
· I think about asking my friends for their opinions about my
in-process work.
· I think about deadlines; I plan so things get done on time.
I see a change in my use of
visuals.
I never used visuals before. Before this course, I focused
entirely on writing good papers. Now I think visuals can be
useful and powerful. Making them part of my work is a good
idea, both as support for a paper and as stand-alone
communication.
I see a change in my oral
I now know how to record a short presentation, which is a
presentation preparation and great way to practice future presentations. I became more
style.
comfortable with the technology. I could see myself improve
each time I tried another version of my presentation.
Model
Feelings: Explain how
you feel about the
changes (or lack of
changes). Surprised?
Discouraged? Pleased?
Optimistic?
Examples—No Details
Examples—Details
I’m disappointed about my
I thought improvement in my writing would be a LOT faster, so
writing but optimistic as well. I’m disappointed that I see only a little improvement, but that
small amount makes me optimistic that my writing can
improve a great deal more. I feel confident that I know how to
get better: Write a lot more and seek feedback.
I feel a lot of excitement
about using visuals.
I’m surprised I’m now less
nervous doing oral
presentations.
I can’t even draw, so who would have guessed that the best
part of this course for me is the excitement I feel about using
visuals. Sometimes I feel like the photos I take say more than
the words I write.
I used to avoid oral presentations whenever possible because
they made me extraordinarily nervous. I’m surprised that
recording my practice sessions over and over actually makes
me less nervous and more confident.
Model
Evaluation: Evaluate
whether the change (or
lack thereof) is, in your
opinion, good or bad (or
somewhere in between).
Examples—No Details
Examples—Details
The improvement in my
writing is small but
noticeable.
I see some improvement in my writing. Now I’m more careful
to use topic sentences that capture my main ideas. I’m super
careful to include appealing details. In my Personal Philosophy
Essay I used a persuasive statistic for logos, an appealing
quotation for pathos; I double-checked accuracy for ethos.
My papers and presentations
are better when I use visuals.
Since I never used visuals before, I could say improvement is
HUGE, but, in fact, I’m only slightly comfortable using visuals.
However, I think the visuals I do use improve my work. I won’t
ever forget to use titles and captions.
My oral presentation
performance is a little better.
I have a difficult time evaluating myself, but the difference
between my first practice session and the final version of my
presentation is obvious, even to me. I’m embarrassed to say
I’m better because it sounds like bragging, but the recording
shows that I improved.
Model
Examples—No Details
Analysis: Analyze what My writing was better because
influenced, contributed I revised.
to, or caused changes.
Identify factors affecting
processes and products.
Examples—Details
I think a lot about what I’m going to write, but I wait until the
last minute to actually write the paper. No time for revision!
This course forced me to plan, draft, wait for feedback, and
then several days later revise the paper. I’m surprised that
waiting actually makes the paper a LOT better.
Analyzing visuals turned out to be easy and interesting.
My use of visuals improved
Actually, many of the visual concepts that gave me a new
because I started seeing things
way to see images (for example, balance, background,
differently.
symmetry) can be applied to my writing and oral
presentations, too, which surprised me.
My oral presentations were
better because I prepared and
practiced.
I was terrified of doing a bad job with so many people seeing
and listening to me. More than 17,000 people in our MOOC
gives “audience” a new meaning. I imagined what other
MOOC participants would be willing to hear. I tried to create
a presentation interesting to people around the world.
Model
Examples—No Details
Conclusion: Generalize
I have a clearer sense of my
about your processes and
own process.
products. Explain your
future changes.
Examples—Details
Because the video lectures and the assignments reinforced
process, I now have a clearer sense of my own writing process.
This change is important because I can now see how my
process can be adapted to other situations. I can see the
difference in the way I drafted my initial Benchmark
Statement and the way I’m drafting the revised one.
Because of this course, my
confidence in using visuals
has improved.
The feedback I received in the Discussion Forums persuaded
me that I could use visuals successfully. I’m confident that I
can use factors such as balance, light, foreground and
background, and framing when I analyze visuals that I consider
including in my papers.
My future presentations will
be better because of what I
learned in this course.
I’m unlikely to ever give another oral presentation without
considering audience and ways to use logos, ethos, and
pathos. These rhetorical elements are going to stay with me
forever.
Model
Action plans — Project
what you intend to do in
the future. Explain how
you plan to use what
you’ve learned.
Examples—No Details
Examples—Details
I plan to get better.
I plan to improve by spending more time thinking about
what I’m going to write, brainstorming ideas (either by
myself or with a friend), and planning with notes and an
outline.
I plan to do a better job of
using visuals.
Using visuals to support my ideas isn’t new to me (I believe
they help a lot), but I always thought, if they were good
enough, they spoke for themselves. I’ve learned that an
audience can have multiple interpretations. From now on
when I use visuals, I’ll spend create titles and captions.
I plan to practice oral
presentations.
I’m a good speaker, so I’ve seldom practiced. Now I can see
that I get even better with practice (even for a short talk like
the one in this course), so in the future, I plan to practice up
to three or four times before any presentation.