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A Reflective Writing Framework for ComputingEducationConference or Workshop ItemHow to cite:

Alrashidi, Huda; Joy, Mike and Ullmann, Thomas (2019). A Reflective Writing Framework for ComputingEducation. In: ITiCSE ’19 Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in ComputerScience Education, ACM, New York, NY, USA p. 295.

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A Reflective Writing Framework for Computing EducationHuda Alrashidi

h.alrashidi@warwick.ac.ukComputer Science Department,

University of WarwickCoventry, UK

Mike Joym.s.joy@warwick.ac.uk

Computer Science Department,University of Warwick

Coventry, UK

Thomas Daniel Ullmannt.ullmann@open.ac.uk

Institute of Educational Technology,The Open UniversityMilton Keynes, UK

ABSTRACTMany disciplines already embed reflective practice in their curricu-lum as it is important for the professional development of theirstudents. Many frameworks have been developed to capture reflec-tive practice, but there is a lack of knowledge about what constitutesit in computer science education (CSE). This poster introduces areflective writing framework (RWF) in CSE. This poster makes twocontributions: (1) it outlines the construction process of the RWFfor CSE, and (2) it discusses the proposed validation of the RWFwith a panel of experts.

CCS CONCEPTS• Social and professional topics→ Computing education.

KEYWORDSReflection, Reflective Writing, Computer ScienceACM Reference Format:Huda Alrashidi, Mike Joy, and Thomas Daniel Ullmann. 2019. A ReflectiveWriting Framework for Computing Education. In Innovation and Technologyin Computer Science Education (ITiCSE ’19), July 15–17, 2019, Aberdeen,Scotland UK. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1 page. https://doi.org/10.1145/3304221.3325580

1 REFLECTIVE WRITING FRAMEWORKMany reflection theories and frameworks have been developed toassess students’ level of reflection especially in education, socialscience and nursing. However, to the best of our knowledge, noframework is targeting computing education. The overall aim of thisresearch is to: 1) investigate the indicators that can be used to assessreflective writing in computing education based on the thinkingactivities that can be presented in the computer science writing, 2)validate the RWF with a survey of experts who will provide theirsuggestions and comments on the following items: the formulationof the language used in the description, and the relevance of theselevels and the involved indicators, and 3) build an automatic tool toassess students’ level of reflection in CSE based on the developedRWF. The focus of this poster is the first step investigating theindicators that can be used to build the RWF and assess reflectivewriting in computing education. The reflective writing framework(RWF) assess the levels of reflection in CSE. From the characteristics

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Table 1: Indicators of the RWF

Levels Indicators

Descriptive Reports a fact from experience and/or material.

Reflective

Understanding: understands and analyses the ex-perience.Feeling: identifies and analyses their thoughtsand feelings.Reasoning: explains the experience by reasons.Comparison: links the experience to another.

Critical-Reflective

Perspective: shows awareness of alternatives.New learning: describes a new learning.Future action: intends or plans to do something.

of computer science writing that involves unique elements such as:problem-solving, data structure, algorithms and software systemsand based on the theoretical and empirical work about reflection[1, 3], we derived the RWF consisting of eight indicators and threelevels (see Table 1) [2]. The non-technical aspect in the followingexample "Ultimately this was content that is covered in any basicparallel algorithms book and I did not believe adding it all to myreport would have been worthwhile" for the suggested indicatorsthat are associated with the reflective level, such as understanding,feelings, and reasoning. The following example illustrates, "If Iwere to do this project again, I would have examined the Quasi-NCalgorithm given for bipartite perfect matching instead of Kulkarni notalgorithm as I feel this is more relevant and important result", showsevidence of reflective plus critical reflective levels’ indicators, theseare: understanding, feeling, reasoning, perspectives, new learning,and future action.

2 FUTUREWORKThe future work involves analysing the annotation provided by theraters to evaluate the RWF, updating the suggest indicators basedon the results of the analysis and build automatic reflective writinganalysis for CSE.

REFERENCES[1] John D Bain, Colleen Mills, Roy Ballantyne, and Jan Packer. 2002. Developing

reflection on practice through journal writing: Impacts of variations in the focusand level of feedback. Teachers and Teaching 8, 2 (2002), 171–196.

[2] Thomas Daniel Ullmann. 2019. Automated Analysis of Reflection in Writing: Vali-datingMachine Learning Approaches. International Journal of Artificial Intelligencein Education (2019), 1–41.

[3] Frances KY Wong, David Kember, Loretta YF Chung, and Louisa Yan CertEd.1995. Assessing the level of student reflection from reflective journals. Journal ofadvanced nursing 22, 1 (1995), 48–57.