Without face-to-face interactions, OWI instructors need to employ different strategies to ensure students understand what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it connects to the main goals of the course. In other words, online instructors need to make sure students understand the “how” and the “why” of pedagogy without hearing the instructor say it verbally. One way to combat the loss of in-class connections is by asking students to engage in reflection.

While reflective writing has many benefits—opening a space for creativity, encouraging recognition of the writing process, allowing students to identify development of learning, etc.—it also provides a way for instructors to ensure students are seeing the connections. 

By using guiding questions in a reflective writing assignment, students are forced to slow down and analyze their own choices. Writing instructors often include student reflections with final drafts. This way, students can answer questions related to the choices they made in their projects. For example, a reflection assignment for a job materials project might ask students “why did you choose this resume design layout and how does it help you achieve your purpose and audience?” This way, students engage with and think through the why and the how in relation to their own writing. 

Carefully crafted reflective questions can help make connections and show the students how they are reaching the course goals through their assignments. The following example is a reflection assignment for an information design project. The project asks students to work with raw data, make ethical data visualizations, integrate the visualizations into a written report, and employ proper document design. 

Information Design Project Reflection:

Compose a 250- to 500-word response that explains the following (use headings to identify each of the topics listed below):

• How did you select which data to visualize and why did you choose that type of visualization (pie chart, bar graph, table, etc.)?
• How did you ensure that your visualizations of the data were fair, accurate, and clear?
• What design decisions have you made to tailor your report to your audience and your purpose?

These three guiding questions ask students to pause and reflect on why they made the decisions they made. Additionally, it has students engage with and reflect on the main concepts of the project: working with data, making ethical data visualizations, and altering design for purpose and audience. For these reasons, reflective writing can help students make connections in online writing environments.