Facilitating online reflective learning for health and social care professionals

Abstract

Health and social care education has a long established association with reflective learning as a way of developing post‐qualifying professional practice. Reflective learning is also a key feature of self‐regulatory learning, which is an essential aspect of life‐long learning for today’s National Health Service workforce. Using a small‐scale case study of practice this paper considers the experiences of 25 learners who, as qualified health and social care practitioners studying a B.Sc. (Hons.) Public Health programme, used Blackboard to reflect online. Questionnaires, a focus group discussion and examination of online dialogue were used to collect data. Findings suggest that learners developed more extensive reflective accounts than they had done previously when reflecting in traditional classroom environments. They reflected further, spent longer reflecting, self‐managed their reflective learning and recognised significant learning achievements through reflection. Data indicate varying levels of engagement in the online reflective process, with not all learners achieving a deep level of critical analysis. This paper considers the design and construction of the online learning activity and environment before discussing the findings of the evaluation and implications.