Students are diverse, as are their experiences in our courses and the difficulties that they encounter. It can be a challenge to determine how to help students given this type of diversity.

Learning essays represent one technique to embrace this diversity. In a learning essay, a student is asked to identify difficulties that they encountered during a learning experience and to talk about what they learned from these difficulties. From a learning theory perspective, the goal is to help students self-explain their learning, make learning visible, and make connections between their experiences and more abstract ideas.

As part of my dissertation work, I developed a tool called the Reflective Learner that scaffolded the writing of learning essays. During my research, over 100 students wrote over 1000 learning essays using the Reflective Learner. how to help... one way is by promoting learning from experience in a way that is anchored in their experiences... Reflective Learner but also learning reflections as part of the submission portfolio