Reflections
Reflections ask you to demonstrate and apply your understanding of the course material in a more substantial format than reading reports. Asking you to connect concepts across readings and research, reflections aim to evaluate your understanding of and critical thinking about concepts covered in this course. Keeping pace with readings and engaging in discussions will make reflections easier to prepare.
Reflections are inherently open-book, so you may reference readings, discussion posts, presentation slides, notes, or other material readily available on the web.
Reflections are strictly individual assignments (i.e., do not discuss your reflections with others). You may consult the course staff with any general questions about the intent of this reflection format, but should not ask course staff to review a draft, answer questions that emerge as you prepare a reflection, or otherwise provide direct input in your preparation of a reflection.
Types of Reflections
Students are asked to submit three different types of reflections, on each of:
- Contribution: what knowledge is gained through research activities.
- Method: how research activities are structured to demonstrate contributions.
- Framing: why contributions are valued, through motivation, language, theory, or understanding that can contextualize activities and contributions.
Required and Optional Reflections
Each student is required to submit: 1 contribution reflection, 1 method reflection, 1 framing reflection.
Optionally, a student may submit 1 additional reflection of any type. If this optional reflection is submitted and receives a higher grade than a required reflection of the same type, it will replace that prior reflection.
Reflections can be submitted throughout the course, but only one reflection can be submitted in any calendar week (i.e., between Sunday 12:00am and Saturday 11:59pm). This is to encourage you to engage with reflections throughout the quarter, and also to distribute associated demands of grading.
All reflections must be submitted by Saturday March 15, 11:59pm.
Grading
Evaluation is necessarily subjective, so we have attempted to detail how we will approach evaluation of each type of reflection. As above, you may consult the course staff with any general questions about the intent of this reflection format, but should not ask course staff to review a draft, answer questions that emerge as you prepare a reflection, or otherwise provide direct input in your preparation of a reflection.
Each reflection will be graded on a scale of 10 points. This is intended to provide sufficient granularity for evaluation to differentiate reflections of varying quality, while remaining coarse enough to avoid introducing distinctions that are likely to be inconsistently applied. We expect few submissions to receive 10 points, as the upper extreme of the grading scale will be reserved for reflections that differentiate themselves. Reflections that receive other strong grades may therefore meet expectations, may not be missing any expected component, and may not be incorrect in any identifiable way. The strongest grades will be reserved for reflections that go beyond expectations in one or more regards.
Do not include your name in your submission. Our goal is to maximize anonymity in grading of reflections. Any submission that includes a name will be graded but then penalized for this breach of anonymity.
Submission
Submit your reflections in PDF format:
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Required Contribution Reflection:
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Required Method Reflection:
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Required Framing Reflection:
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Optional Reflection: