With Physiopedia Plus you can now record reflections on your learning

pp-plus-reflective-note-facility

Reflect as you learn with a new innovative note recording facility on Physiopedia Plus (PP+).

When we learn something new we can choose take some time to consider this new knowledge in the context of what we knew before (including our previous experiences) and then perhaps also think about how we plan to adapt what we do in the future to take this into account to improve our performance and patient outcomes.  This process is commonly referred to in the world of education as reflective learning and is the basis of the use of professional individual portfolios and their digital equivalents, eportfolios.

Physiopedia Plus (PP+) is not an eportfolio and we do not plan on adding conventional eportfolio style features to this site. There are many existing systems which are dedicated to providing these toolsets and in our experience the majority of our users are reluctant to engage with the often laborious and often complex activity of maintaining a personal eportfolio. However we do want Physiopedia Plus (PP+) to actively promote and support the deeper learning encouraged by reflection, specifically around the learning activities engaged in when a user is participating in a PP+ course. For this reason we have spent considerable time considering (reflecting!), planning and developing an integrated reflective note making facility which are now excited to offer to PP+ users!

With this new set of features Physiopedia Plus (PP+) now provides a simple, easy to use platform for recording reflective learning at the point of learning. Based on our years of elearning experience we have carefully designed this facility with a particular set of characteristics to make it as easy to use and also as effective and useful as possible:

Optional – you should choose if and when you wish to engage in a deep reflection on a learning experience and so recording a reflective note on PP+ is always optional.

Simple – the reflective note facility is purposefully restricted to a simple, single text entry  (i.e. no complex multiple fields, tagging, categories, file attachments etc). This makes writing your reflection no more taxing than posting a simple message on Facebook or Twitter.

Timely – the opportunity to record these notes is provided as close to the moment of the actual learning activity as possible, so the learning experience is still fresh. In this case it is provided as an integrated part of the process of logging a PP+ learning activity as completed, rather than as a time consuming additional activity requiring use of another separate system with related logins, navigation etc.

Brief – the reflective note text entry field applies a 255 character limit specifically to encourage brief, focused notes (akin to Twitter posts) that will be easy to digest and review at a later date (e.g. at the end of a course, at the end of a CPD/CE year or even years later).

Exportable – your recorded reflective notes are your property and they are only of use when you can easily refer back to them at a later date. You must also be able to take a copy of them out of the PP+ site for future reference and/or for import into another system in particular where you are required to keep a professional portfolio or submit evidence of learning for re-registration purposes. The PP+ system provides several methods for reviewing and exporting your learning activity logs which now include your reflective notes. Your PP+ activity log provides a searchable table where you can filter by items with and without recorded notes. With the PP+ activity exports you can now choose to include these notes in the PDF reports, CSV files and eportfolio import XML files.

If you are an existing PP+ user, you can start using this new reflective note facility today when you log your next learning activity as complete. Simply write your notes into the textfield and click Save. Please be aware that this is a work in progress and we value all feedback to make sure these new developments offer the greatest benefit to all our users. Please do get in touch once you have explored the new facilities and let us know what you think!

nafi-reflection

An example reflective note entered into the PP+ activity logging facility