Introducing the Limina Reflection Journal Plugin for Moodle
In this Article
Bring Reflections, Evidence and Learning Together Across a Moodle Course
Last week, we explored how reflective learning can be deliberately designed into a course. Reflection can help students make meaning, examine their thinking, connect theory with practice, work with feedback and, where relevant, reconsider their assumptions or how they think and act.
We also looked at how reflection can support surface, deep and transformational learning, and how prompts, timing, feedback and evidence influence what students are able to do with that reflection.
That left us with a very practical question:
Our Limina Tech and Innovation team has been working on exactly that problem over the past few months.
The result is the Limina Reflection Journal, a Moodle activity that gives students one structured place to build a record of their reflection, evidence and development over time.
Reflection Can Connect Learning Moments Across a Course
Think about an eight-week leadership programme.
A student may reflect on their understanding of leadership early in the programme. A few weeks later, a difficult team exercise confronts them with something unexpected, and feedback from a facilitator challenges how they saw the situation. Later still, a workplace experience gives them an opportunity to try a different approach they learnt in the course.
Each of those moments gives the student something worth thinking about, and worth spending time reflecting on.
The value grows when those reflections connect. The student can return to earlier thinking, see how they responded to feedback, recognise patterns in their decisions and notice where their understanding or practice has shifted.
That is the learning journey we wanted the Limina Reflection Journal to support.
Why a New Plugin for Moodle?
Moodle already gives learning designers several useful ways to create reflection activities.
- Assignments work well for assessed individual reflection.
- Forums support dialogue and shared reflection.
- Feedback activities are useful for structured check-ins.
- Blogs, Wikis and specialist plugins offer other ways to capture reflective work.
What’s missing is a tool to capture a student’s longer reflective journey across a course.
The current Moodle activities spread prompts across several activities and, in turn, evidence and feedback may often be separated from the reflection journey it relates to. Earlier responses can become difficult for students and facilitators to see as one developing record.
We wanted a simpler way to keep that thread together.
Building the Reflection Journey in Moodle
The Limina Reflection Journal allows course developers and learning designers to create different types of structured prompts at meaningful points in a course.
Students respond as they progress, attach evidence where it is relevant, receive feedback and submit their work. Each submission contributes to a cumulative record of reflection across the course.
At any point, the student can return to their past journal entries and see their reflections in one place. They can review previous submissions and, where the activity design allows it, add or update supporting evidence such as photographs or documents.
Teachers, facilitators and assessors can review the work, provide feedback and assess responses where appropriate. Feedback remains connected to the individual reflection, while grades can be written directly to the student’s Moodle gradebook entry.
At the end of the course, the student or facilitator can download the complete reflection journey in different formats. Records can also support moderation and compliance processes where these form part of the programme.
Building Portfolios of Evidence in Work-Integrated Learning
The Reflection Journal has also proved especially useful in courses that include Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) and require students to build a Portfolio of Evidence (PoE).
Student teachers completing teaching practice, students completing workplace learning, and those enrolled in occupational qualifications can use the Reflection Journal to capture the activities and evidence required while they are in the field or completing on-the-job training.
For example:
A teaching student can upload a lesson plan, observation or mentor feedback and reflect on what happened.
An intern can attach a workplace document, project output or supervisor feedback and examine what the experience taught them.
A student completing an occupational qualification can gather evidence of practice, respond to structured prompts and build a Portfolio of Evidence that can be reviewed, assessed and moderated.
Students can also use the Moodle App on their phones to capture evidence while the learning is happening. Photographs, documents and other evidence can be uploaded and submitted as part of the learning event, creating a more complete record of what happened in practice.
Across time, the Reflection Journal brings reflection and evidence together as part of the student’s developing record.
Built From a Real Learning Need
Learning sits at the centre of what we do at Limina, and a big part of our work is finding practical ways to make Moodle support richer learning experiences.
The Reflection Journal started with a real client need. Nico and the team originally developed it to capture student reflection as part of the JEMBA courses. Once we started using it, the possibilities quickly grew. Other clients began using the same underlying capability for Work-Integrated Learning, workplace learning and Portfolios of Evidence.
That is one of the things we love about building learning tools inside Moodle. A capability developed for one learning problem can often create value in many other contexts.
We’re very excited to introduce the Limina Reflection Journal Plugin and to show you what it can do.
Over the coming week, we’ll show you how it works inside Moodle, what students and facilitators experience, and how it can support reflective learning, Work-Integrated Learning, professional development and Portfolios of Evidence.
How Can I Get Limina’s Reflection Journal Plugin for My Moodle?
At Limina, we think of Moodle as a Lego base that allows us to build the learning environment our clients need. We invent plugins and tools when our clients need capabilities that extend what they can do inside Moodle. The Reflection Journal, for example, was built to support Alex and Gerald’s JEMBA courses, and our PinBoard plugin was first designed for our Maths Problem Solving Courses with the South African Maths Foundation.
Once a plugin is developed, tested and implemented, it becomes part of the growing set of tools we can make available across Limina-managed Moodle environments.
Interested in using the Limina Reflection Journal in your Moodle?
Book a free 30-minute consultation with our team.
Dr Isabel Tarling – CEO
Isabel Tarling is a learning sciences scholar, programme designer and education researcher, with a PhD from the University of Cape Town. Her research in online and technology-supported learning forms the foundation for much of her writing. She aims to build easy-to-understand bridges between evidence-based research and its everyday application in real-world contexts. Isabel is the founder of Limina, where these ideas are put to work to reimagine learning for organisations of all shapes and sizes.