ReflectionScope: Scaffold Students to Articulate Reflection during

Design-based Learning Processes

Zhongya Zhang

, Tilde Bekker

, Helle Marie Skovbjerg

and Panos Markopoulos

Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, De Zaale, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

LAB Design for Play, Design School Kolding, Agade 10, 6000 Kolding, Denmark

Keywords: Reflection, Design-based Learning, Reflection Support Tool, Digital Learning Environment.

Abstract: Supporting students to make their reflections visible and accessible during the inquiry-based process can

enhance the learning outcomes and foster reflective thinking. This research examines how technology can

play a role in scaffolding students to create contextualized reflection-in-action products which can contribute

to reflection-on-action in design-based learning classroom. In this paper, we present the design of a

multimedia tool called ReflectionScope, which offers contextualized scaffolding to prompt students to

monitor their action and create reflective videos using the digital video-camera or visual “scope” attached.

Twenty-one secondary school students (aged 13) used ReflectionScope in a two-weeks design-based learning

class. An analysis of the reflective video’s students created during this class and the post-interview, shows

that students articulate their reflection-in-action in a structured way with context-rich information. Students

perceived that the videos are beneficial for retrieving and understanding the contextual reflection-in-action

moments for reflection-on-action. Based on our findings, we propose design principles that can contribute to

designing for reflection practices which can be enhanced by media-technology in real-world inquiry-based

learning environments.

1 INTRODUCTION

Design-based learning (DBL) is an inquiry-based

form of pedagogy that engages students in a design

thinking process to do project-like work (De Vries,

2006; Ke, 2014). Students engage in a self-directed

learning process (Loyens, Magda and Rikers, 2008)

including successive authentic inquiry and design

activities. Learning takes place while the learner is

actively engaged with a realistic instructional context.

Supporting students to be reflective during the

learning process and articulate their reflection can

enhance students’ learning outcomes from the

learning processes (Linn, 2000).

Prior research has employed varied media to

promote learners’ intentional creation of digital traces

during the learning process (Tseng, 2015; Gourlet et

al., 2016; Leinonen et al., 2016). Yet, these tools

often fall short in scaffolding students’ explicit and

context-rich reflection articulation. This paper

explores how to design media technology that can

scaffold students’ (aged 13) contextualized

reflection-in-action articulation. We aim to support

students to create effective reflection products in the

design-based learning environment, where learning

activities are self-directed and take place in the real

world instead of in a learning simulation

environment. To reach this goal, we designed and

evaluated a system named “ReflectionScope”. It can

support students to record context-rich reflection

videos during the learning process. Furthermore, the

videos can help students retrieve their learning

experience sufficiently and collectively. 21 secondary

school students used ReflectionScope for a two-

weeks Design-based learning project. We conducted

a post-interview session comprising of 1) recalling

their experience of the moments when students used

ReflectionScope to record reflection-in-action, 2) a

simulated reflection-on-action session where students

watched peer’s reflection videos and described how

they might retrieve information from these reflective

videos.

The contribution of the paper is three empirically

derived design principles for the design of media

tools to support secondary school students’ reflection

in design-based learning classrooms.

Zhang, Z., Bekker, T., Skovbjerg, H. and Markopoulos, P.

ReﬂectionScope: Scaffold Students to Articulate Reﬂection during Design-based Learning Processes.

DOI: 10.5220/0009578801690179

In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2020) - Volume 2, pages 169-179

ISBN: 978-989-758-417-6

169

Figure 1: a) the mechanism of releasing the contextualized scaffolding (recording interfaces) to students’ devices; (b) tangible

scope linked with the digital scope overlay; (c) the way of documenting and visualizing of the reflective videos.

2 RELATED WORK

Regarding technological reflection suppport, Fessel

et al. distinguished between technologies for two

types of reflection, i.e. reflection-in-action guidance

and reflection-on-action guidance (Fessl et al., 2017).

The first type promotes learners to reflect in the midst

of the operative learning activity, while the second

type supports reflection-on-action to engage learners

in reflecting at a later time with respect to the learning

activity. Prompting is a crucial technique to motivate

learners to reflect in the midst of doing (Fessl et al.,

2017).

What to prompt can have a major influence on the

efficiency of learning (Davis, 2003). For younger

students who lack the ability to reflect appropriately,

more directed prompts need to be offered for several

reasons: 1) To direct attention to important contextual

issues (Self et al., 2000), 2) to activate tacit/inert

knowledge (Garcia et al., 2018), 3) to help learners to

make justified decision (Davis and Linn, 2000), 4) to

enhance awareness of the learning strategies

(Verpoorten and Westera, 2016). Regarding the more

directed or content-specific prompts, they need to

reduce reflection difficulties to lower the cognitive

load. Typically, there are built-in reflection

opportunities embedded in learning simulation

systems. For example, the system may present text-

based prompts which appear along the process of

learning. Reflection breaks is a technique for

embedding stop-and-think moments in the learning

flow; eLearning platforms distribute reflection

moments evenly during the learning process

(Verpoorten and Westera, 2016).

Presenting prompts close to the time the learner

needs them is more effective (Thillmann et al., 2009).

However, few prior studies setting in real-world

inquiry-based learning environments have realized

the built-in reflection opportunities. Technological

support for reflection-in-action support has been

attempted, but the support was mostly confined to

prompting students to intentionally monitor the

progress. “Spin” (Tseng, 2015) is a tool for students

to document their physical design projects through

capturing and creating animations during the design

process. Similar to “Spin,” “Research diary” is a

photography tool within a studio space in the

classroom. It promotes students to capture the

progress of their ‘making’ project by taking pictures

(Gourlet, Eveillard and Dervieux, 2016). “Teamup”

(Leinonen et al., 2016) is a tool, with generic

reflection prompts “what we did,” “what we will do”

and “what is your design progress,” to prompt

students to video record their oral reflection. In this

setting where all the learning activities take place in

the real world, as they present the prompt in a static

way, the teacher might need to continuously remind

students to use the tool to keep track of the learning

process. Such tools might be further improved by

paying more attention to how to make the prompts

present dynamically.

Media-enhanced reflection-in-action can also

help to retrieve learning experiences after a longer

period of time. According to experimental learning

theory, learning takes place through reflection on

hands-on doing (Kolb, 2014). The learning process

needs to be documented in a way that enables to

revisit effectively. In most of the studies conducted in

real-world classrooms, where they support students to

document all these reflective products on the

timeline, students can trace back their learning

process chronologically and reflect on the critical

incidents of the learning processes. “Spin”, “research

diary”, and “team up” present a chronological process

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overview of the photos or videos created along the

learning process. (Tseng, 2015; Gourlet, Eveillard

and Dervieux, 2016; Leinonen et al., 2016).

Moreover, Boud et al. suggested that in order to be

able to return sufficiently to learning experiences,

context information is important to capture (Boud,

Keogh and Walker, 1996). In a learning simulation

environment, Lin et al. proposed the design strategy

of displaying problem-solving and thinking processes

to enable learners return to the experience (Lin et al.,

1999). However, in a learning setting in which most

learning activities take place in the real world, the

context information can only be traced back by

learners intentionally capturing the context

information during the learning process. Fess et al.

introduced specific contextualization components of

reflection guidance to prompt for manual text input of

the context descriptions. They emphasize the

importance of capturing context-rich information

when reflecting, which enables the individual to

recall sufficiently (Fessl et al., 2017). Their setting is

informal learning in the workplace. However, this

scaffolding strategy is not suitable in our setting. In

our setting, design-based learning classrooms:

although reflection is an important learning activity,

reflection-in-action occurs in parallel with the main

DBL activities. Students cannot be interrupted too

much from their learning flow. Text-based input is

not suitable in such a situation. Video and audio are

faster to verbalize reflection-in-action. Garcia et al.

designed a gamified smartwatch app with a content-

specific (science concept) reflection prompt. It

encourages students to be aware of the phenomena in

nature that can be explained by a learned science

concept. Students can record audio reflections when

they find a natural phenomenon that can be explained

by a learned science concept in nature (Garcia et al.,

2018). The technological tools describe above aim to

support young learners to generate reflection fast and

conveniently which includes authentic contexts

information.

Most related research has been carried out in

learning stimulation environments in which the

learning activities and prompts can be integrated and

well-programmed. In that case, the prompt can pop

up actively at pre-set moments. The learning context

can be automatically documented by the system. The

design strategies cannot directly be transferred to a

real-world design-based learning setting. The built-in

reflection opportunities are not easy to embed in the

learning processes where the learning activities take

place in a real-world environment. Moreover, the

context information of reflection moments cannot

easily be tracked automatically outside of a learning

stimulation environment. It requires learners to

capture it intentionally and at the right moment.

When extensive explanation is provided to the

student by the teacher on diverse considerations when

engaging in reflection, such as how to determine

when to reflect, on what to reflect and the

requirements about the format and the length of the

reflection, there is a risk of cognitive overload of the

student. Furthermore, in an educational setting,

learning often happens within a learning community,

Lin et al proposed that the forum for reflection is

important design strategy (Lin et al., 1999). The

representation of reflection is required to be prepared

to fit in the social characteristic of the learning

community. This in turn also requires reflection

representations to be retrieved efficiently by others in

this learning community. If the recorded reflection is

lengthy and less to the point, there is a risk on

information overload of the teachers and students.

Considering our interest to develop tools to

support reflection in and on action, so far, less effort

has been invested in understanding how to design for

creating reflection-in-action products that can be

retrieved effectively in a learning community. Within

a DBL context, the challenge in technological

reflection scaffolding is to direct students’

contextualized thinking and recording with a fairly

low cognitive load and limited interruption during the

learning process. We set out to design media tools for

supporting reflection in the context of a design-based

learning context. By examining the applicability of

the design strategies employed in related works to our

context, three challenges emerge:

 How to embed reflection opportunities and

prompts that can scaffold and guide students’

reflection-in-action in the context of flexible

DBL processes?

 How to support students to articulate reflection-

in-action in a context-rich and structured way

without spending too much effort?

 How can reflection videos help students retrieve

learning experiences in context efficiently and

collectively later in time?

3 PROPOSED DESIGN

PRINCIPLES

We propose three design principles on how to design

multimedia tools that can support teenager’s

reflection in a design-based learning context.

ReﬂectionScope: Scaffold Students to Articulate Reﬂection during Design-based Learning Processes

171

3.1 Design Principle 1: Embed the

Reflection Opportunities

P1: Enables the Teacher to Present the Preset

Contextual Reflective Prompts on Students’

Recording Devices to Ensure that They Get the

Prompts Timely in Relevant Contexts.

The content-specific prompt can give students a focus

on what to reflect, and it only makes sense in its

relevant context (Davis and Linn, 2000; Sharma and

Hannafin, 2007). Delivering the content-specific

prompt at the relevant time constitutes the concept of

actively displaying the prompts. Unlike learning

simulations in which all the learning context and the

corresponding reflection prompts can be integrated

and well-programmed, DBL environment is more

flexible, the teacher plays important role in

scaffolding students, thereby, the system should

enable teacher’s manipulation of what to prompt, and

when to prompt. In addition, we set out to leverage

the visual properties of Augmented Reality (AR)

technology. It displays the reflection prompts on the

recording interface in order to draw students’

attention.

3.2 Design Principle 2: Contextualize

the Recording

P2: Offers a Flexible Camera Perspective with

Visual Focus to Support Contextualized and

Structured Recording.

In order to minimize the interruption to students’

learning flow, the system should allow students to

intuitively identify a structured way to interact with

the tool. In design-based learning classrooms, where

a variety of representations (such as paper-based

sketches, CAD models) are created during the

learning process, a fixed camera perspective is not

suitable. Therefore, a flexible camera perspective

should be offered to get access to all these

representations. A content-specific reflection prompt

aims to give students a focus for thinking, as

mentioned above, to cooperate with the prompts and

to make the recording products in a structured

manner. The recording interface should give a visual

focus to support students in making the connection

between thinking and the visual recording.

3.3 Design Principle 3: Reference for

Retrieving the Reflection Product

P3: Attaches a Contextual Element as a Reference

for People to Decode the Reflection Product.

People create extra representations to help them make

sense of situations (Kirsh, 2010). An extra

representation attached to a reflection product could

provide a persistent element as a shared reference to

help people decode information captured in the

reflection products. In order to offer a reference to

help others to understand reflection-in-action

moments sufficiently, we propose that the

contextualized scaffolding is valuable to benefit

others to understand the reflection products.

Furthermore, adding extra elements to the video can

also be beneficial for the learner him/herself to recall

the reflection moment after a long time.

4 ReflectionScope

The general idea of ReflectionScope is to design a

tool dedicated to reflection in DBL classroom. It is a

quick video recording system whose recording

interface can be visually augmented. The basic

recording interfaces for students are overlaid with the

digital “scope,” which comprises of the teacher’s

reflective question input and the shape element

(Figure 2).

Figure 2: The set-up and components of ReflectionScope.

The scaffolding mechanism enables the teacher to

input the reflective questions and embeds them in the

learning process by setting the time when the

questions should appear for students to answer. The

system will convert the reflective questions into

ReflectionScope recording interfaces, which will be

automatically released to students’ devices at the

preset time during the process (refer to Figure 1. a).

Students can only record video up to 60 seconds at

most for each question, but they are allowed to record

several videos by using any interface.

ReflectionScope embodies the three design principles

as follows:

P1. It includes two design elements. First, the

system enables students to receive the scaffolds only

when they need it during the DBL process. i.e., the

system releases the recording interface at a preset

time when is the moment that teacher anchored for

student to think contextualized about the knowledge

application, learning strategy, or thoughtful on action.

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Second, the scaffolds are presented as the colorful

digital overlays on top of the recording interfaces. It

shows the question in the context, yet they can easily

be discriminated from the context of the real-world

artifacts. When the interfaces are released on their

devices, the students’ devices change from a blank

screen to ReflectionScope interface to draw their

attention.

P2. We designed the digital scope overlay. The

digital scope consists of the reflective question with a

shape linked to it. The tangible “scope” (the video

capture tool) is designed to accompany the digital

“scope”. This form of design is to tell students that

they need to use the tangible scope in hand to target

the real-world artifacts and they can show the

contextual evidence within the digital scope on the

screen (see Figure1. b).

P3. Apart from documenting the videos in a

chronological order, ReflectionScope can

automatically document the videos with the digital

scope attached to help people understand the

behaviors revealed in the videos (refer to Figure 1. c).

In addition, the system constrains every video

duration within 60 seconds, to limit the whole length

of videos within an accessible range to watch.

We have evaluated ReflectionScope to address the

following research questions:

 How can ReflectionScope direct students

contextualized reflection-in-action articulation

 How can ReflectionScope support students to

capture the context information in a structured

way with lower cognitive load.

 How can the reflection videos help students

retrieve the learning experience collectively

and effectively after a longer period of time?

5 METHOD

In this study, we employed a research through design

method (Zimmerman, Forlizzi and Evenson, 2007).

Through evaluating ReflectionScope, we aim to

contribute an empirically examined knowledge of

how to design the technology-enhanced tool for

students in DBL classroom or any other similar

learning environment.

5.1 Procedure and Participants

Our study was conducted in a two-weeks language

acquisition class of a local international school. These

two classes of students have learned the knowledge

of writing scripts. The specific learning project was to

design an original script. Students not only created

their own script and they also played the role of

audience to look at each other’s works. Before the

class, the teacher planned and created six contextual

reflective questions and embedded them into the

processes including brainstorm, group discussion,

creating storyboard, classroom gallery, and giving

feedback for students during the learning process

(refer to Figure 3). The system converted the

questions into the digital scope overlay and released

the recording interfaces to students’ devices at the

planned time. Twenty-one secondary school students

from two classes (aged 13, 9 girls and 11 boys)

participated in this study. They sat in pairs or triples

in the classroom. Before each class, students’ groups

could choose to use ReflectionScope or not. Then the

volunteered groups would be equipped with

ReflectionScope. During the two-weeks DBL project,

students worked on three sessions.

Figure 3: The DBL process and the anchored reflection

moments procedure.

Session 1 (week 1-day 1): the students began to

draw mind-maps to list all their ideas and discuss

with the group member. The two ReflectionScope

interfaces were released for scaffolding students to

reflect on the possibilities of all their ideas and their

selection of idea (see figure 3, day 1).

Session 2 (week 1-day 2): The students began to

develop their story by creating a storyboard. Two

ReflectionScope interfaces were released for

scaffolding students to reflect on how they apply

content knowledge to the development of their idea

(see figure 3, day 2).

Session 3 (week 2-day 3): students looked at each

other’s storyboard and gave feedback. Two

ReflectionScope interfaces were released to scaffold

students to learn from peers and accommodate

feedback (see figure 3, day 3).

Post-interview (week 2-day4). After these three

sessions, 15 students were engaged in the post-

interview session.

RS4: Which is the climax,

how it works?

RS1: Which idea has the

potential to become story

RS2: Which idea has the best

potential to become story

after group brainstorm

Brainstorm

Group discussion and idea selection

RS3: How is Romeo and Juliet start?

Compared with yours,

do you want to change?

Storyboard 1 Storyboard 2

RS6: What kind of feedback

do you find useful?

RS5: What part of other’s storyboard

do you like the most?

Classroom gallery Feedback

Day 1(50 mins)

Day 2(

50 mins)

Day 3(

50 mins)

Time to release the

interface

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173

5.2 Data Collection and Analysis

Since one function of ReflectionScope is capturing

reflection-in-action through video recording, in this

study, we collected two types of data. The first part of

data is the reflective videos that students created

during the whole learning process. The second type

of data is from the semi-structured interview with the

students. We analyzed the video data to reveal how

students performed in the reflection practice with the

intervention of ReflectionScope. The interview data

was analyzed to and combined with the findings of

the reflective videos.

5.2.1 Reflective Videos

Students’ reflective videos were saved with the digital

overlay and documented chronologically in

specialized folders of their own devices. This part of

data was transcribed and analyzed in MAXQDA

(Oliveira et al., 2013). Our analysis of students’

reflection videos followed the method of (Smith,

2016). By examining the information from different

layers of the videos, we aimed to find out the

emerging students-tool interaction process (see figure

4). We coded the structure of the verbal content. Then

the videos were coded interactively by thoroughly

examining what they were talking about and the

interaction emerged in the video. Third, two coders

discussed the interpretations of the verbal content.

Figure 4: Video coding structure.

5.2.2 Semi-structured Group Interview

After the students have used ReflectionScope for two

weeks (three classes in total), we interviewed 15

(separated into four groups, 8 girls and 7 boys) of

them. Interview sessions included two parts. First,

students were asked to recall the moment when they

used ReflectionScope during the learning process. To

help them recall, we gave them the interfaces they had

used during the whole process. Second, students

watched an integrated video created by

ReflectionScope (in chronological order with the

overlay tagged) that showed the whole process of a

student, to simulate the activity of peer reviewing for

reflection-on-action. In this part, each group watched

another group’s video, and where then asked them

how they could make sense of the videos. The

interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed

verbatim.

6 FINDINGS

In the end, we collected 56 intact videos to analyze.

Students had created 79 videos in total. But on day 1,

something went wrong with one of the devices that

resulted in 17 videos (belong to four students) being

without the soundtrack. But these mute videos can be

counted to calculate the rate of students’ completion.

Not every student used every interface to record

reflective videos. Figure 5 shows the average

completion rate per day of two classes.

6.1 How Can ReflectionScope Direct

Students’ Contextualized

Reflection-in-Action Articulation?

According to the coding structure in figure 4, we

employed the verbal layer of the reflective videos for

answering the first research question. First, we report

the findings from analyzing students’ reflective

videos. Then we report students’ perceptions to

confirm what we have found by analyzing the videos.

Figure 5: The completion status.

6.1.1 Promote Students to Develop

Contextualized Verbal Explanations

Through analysing the verbal part of student-creat

videos, six main types of verbal articulation were

coded (see Table 1).

Table 1: Components of verbal articulation.

Components of verbal articulation in the

Reflective short videos (Total videos

n=56)

Count of

videos

Brief answer to the reflective questions n=47 (84%)

Further explanation n=38 (68%)

Assessment

(

Positive/ne

ative

)

n=15

(

27%

)

Pro

osal for on

oin

action n=6

(

11%

)

eat the

uestion on screen n=8

(

14%

)

Introducing the background n=6 (11%)

Reflective video

Verbal Layer

Interaction

Visual Layer

What were they talking

What were interactions

by using ReflectionScope

What were they showing

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In most of the reflective videos (84%), students had

given a brief answer to the reflective questions.

Following the brief answer, 38 of them (68%)

contained further explanations. 27% of the videos

contained either positive or negative assessment.

We further analyzed the explanations. The

explanations could be described by 9 types (see

Figure 6). We will elaborate on these within an

example classroom scenario. In class 1, students

generated some ideas in the brainstorm part: the

teacher asked students to draw a mind-map to show

their ideas and check the possibilities of all their

ideas. To prohibit students to jump to a superficial

way of idea selection, the teacher scripted two

reflection moments in ReflectionScope for students to

reflect on their selection of ideas. Therefore, students’

short reflective videos of class 1 showed that the

majority of their explanations were “referring to their

personal feeling” (n=5), “their assessment on the

difficulty of each idea” (n=4) and “relevant real-life

experience” (n=5). A large amount of the explanation

came out to be the “explanation with comparing

different ideas” (n=9).

Figure 6: The changes of explanations along the progress.

In class 2, students were asked to develop their

final idea and make a storyboard. The teacher scripted

two reflection moments for students to reflect on

some expert criteria to make them improve their

storyboard. In their short reflective video, a new

explanation appeared that is the “explanation

referring content knowledge” (n=4). Among all these

explanations emerged in this class, the “explanation

with the contextual details” came out to be the most

(n=9). We could see students’ ideas development

through thinking of more details about the selected

idea. In this stage, they started to talk about how to

modify their ongoing action, e.g., “I need to add more

specific details (storyboard),” “I should add emotion

in between (character’s emotion changes).”

In class 3, the classroom activity was a peer

reviewing activity. Students were asked to walk

around the classroom to look at each other’s

storyboards and give feedback. The teacher set two

reflection moments for students to reflect on their

gaining by looking at the other students’ storyboards

and accommodating peer’s feedback. The

“explanation about learning from peers” appeared

(n=4). “Proposal about modifying” their ongoing

action becomes the most frequent type of explanation

(n=6).

In conclusion, the reflective videos appeared to

have the structure that students give a brief answer to

the reflective question. Then most of them would add

explanations. The explanations emerged from each

class change in accordance with the changing of real

learning context. In this case, the teacher had not

inputted the questions to force them to explain (refer

to figure 4), yet most of the students (78%) explained

a bit for enriching the answers. Their reflection

tended to be built on the contextual information as

they continuously proceeded to different learning

phases.

The way of ReflectionScope released the

contextual reflective question can be the stimulus,

which triggers students to think of the questions and

give brief answers to these different questions. Then

they develop further explanation by examining their

knowledge in the situation to talk about how they

built up the answers.

6.1.2 Students’ Perception

Students’ verbal explanation closely related the

embodiments of P1. To verify the insights from the

reflective videos, we analyzed students’ comments on

their perceived scaffolding.

Students perceived that they received the

contextual reflective questions timely. Students

reported that it is “applicable for the situation” and

“good questions to answer in the situation.” It could

help them “change perspective” and “finalize the

idea.” The scaffolds were not always there; students

could get access to the scaffolds at the teacher’s

scripted time. This mechanism made students feel

like they were guided to “stay on track” since they

thought these contextual reflective questions were

“good” and “applicable” to answer along with their

learning. However, it may make students assess the

difficulties of the reflective questions before

recording. Some students preferred to answer the

ones that they perceived easier. Two students

explicitly expressed that they chose to use the

interfaces which they thought were easy ones to

record the reflective videos. Because they believed

that they could record better videos with the easy

ones. It could explain the reason for not every student

responding to each recording interface.

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175

The reflective questions were visually situated in

the context. Students considered that the visual

presented, reflective question overlaid by the

recording interface, supported them to “stay on topic”

while they were recording the reflective videos. They

could always see what the question was while

recording. Some students thought that the visual

elements “shape” the visibility of the reflective

questions. Especially when the question blended with

their real-world texts.

In summary, the contextual scaffolds can draw

students’ attention and trigger them to think of the

questions in the context. While they were recording

the videos, the digital scope supported them to stay

on topic. Receiving the ReflectionScope interfaces set

by the teacher, made students have the feeling of

timeliness and they were staying on track. Some

students gave up recording some interfaces that they

thought hard to answer. Because they thought the

videos will be shown to others and might be related

to their final grades.

6.2 How Can ReflectionScope Support

Students to Capture the

Context-rich Information in a

Structured Way with Lower

Cognitive Load?

To answer this question, we coded students’

interaction with their real-world artifacts while they

were talking in the videos.

6.2.1 Scaffold Students to Reflect with the

Visual Context Information of What

They Are Doing in Hand

The purpose of the visual “scope” is triggering

targeted interaction. We coded the movement which

created interaction with the visual scope as one main

category. We defined it as “interactive targeted

recording behavior,” which includes “zoom in,”

“focus,” and “locate.” This category emerged in 63%

of all the videos. With these interactions, we can see

the visual part in the real-world that corresponded the

verbal reflection. In the videos, this visual part was

highlighted within the digital scope area (see figure

6). The movements shown in the videos can also

reveal students’ thinking paths. e.g., were they talking

a general topic (focus)? Were they going deep into a

specific idea (zoom in)? Or were they talking from

one idea to the other one (locate)?

Table 2: Recording behaviors.

The categories of

interaction

Recording

ehaviors

Counts of

frequenc

C1: Interactive

targeted recording

behavior

(

n=35/ 63%

)

Zoom in N=32

Focus N=30

Locate N=22

C2: Targeting

behavior

Pen or finger to

point

N=20

C3: Untargeted

behavior

Give the bird’s-

e view

N=20

Put the camera

aside

N=14

Some students used a pen or finger to point the

part that they were talking about. We defined this

kind of behaviors as “targeting behavior,” since there

were not clear interactions with the visual shape on

the screen, students resorted to other objects to target.

The third category of recording behaviors,

“untargeted behavior,” are different from the previous

two categories because students hold the tangible

scope to give a bird’s-eye’s view of their real-world

artifacts, or they put the camera aside without

showing anything meaningful. It does not mean that

students who show untargeted behaviors cannot use

the tool appropriately. By checking what they were

talking about, we found parts of the untargeted

behaviors emerged when students were talking about

something which was not shown in the real-world.

Figure 7: The interactive targeting recording behaviors.

6.2.2 Students’ Perception

P2 addressed the form of scaffolds employed in a tool

that can enhance students to capture context-rich

information intuitively. P2 embodies in the tangible

scope cooperating the digital scope of

ReflectionScope. From students’ reflective videos,

the “scope” overlay accompanying the tangible scope

shaped students’ recording behaviors that they

connected thinking with the real-world artifacts.

Students’ perception further confirmed how they

identify a structured way to record the reflection

intuitively.

Students reported that the digital scope informed

them a way of recording with a specific structure

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which they need to involve their thinking and doing

simultaneously. Students reported that the way of

recording made them “go into the moment,” “think

with more details” and “think what you are doing.”

One student said: “(the question with the visual

shape) they don’t make sense on their own, but if you

put them all together (digital scope), it actually works

a lot better.”

ReflectionScope can guide students to record

reflection in a structured way without spending too

much extra cognitive effort. Since one student said

“for me the most important is the visuals, because

visuals help me remember more easily, for example,

there is a graph, it shows me how to do it better than

like a big paragraph, I don’t really remember that.”

Student(S-A8) perceived that the “shape” attached to

the reflective question plays a role in informing him

to add explanations.

6.3 How Can the Reflective Videos

Help Students Retrieve the

Learning Experience Collectively

and Effectively?

Our third goal is to evaluate if the reflective videos,

which were created by using ReflectionScope along

with the process, are efficient to look back

collectively. This is aligned with examining the

design principle 3.

P3 suggests the system should document and

visualize the reflection product in an accessible way.

The system saves students’ reflection videos not only

in chronological order but also the digital “scope”

attached to the videos (see figure 1. c). Four groups

of students watched an integrated video comprising

all the videos created through the learning process by

one of their classmates. Then they talked about how

they make sense of the videos. We cluster three

dimensions to elaborate on the students perceived

efficiency of the reflective video.

The first dimension is that the videos revealed the

factual information of the situation. Students recorded

their verbal reflection accompanying the contextual

situation. When the other students watched the video,

the interaction of multimedia layers delivered rich

and genuine information. Their intuitive feelings are

that this way of reflection can “see the person’s

thinking in situation” and “deeper than writing.”

The second dimension is that the videos were

structured and clear to understand what was going on

with the “scope” overlay. To be precise, students

reported the question element of the “scope” could

help them understand the topic of the reflective

videos. The “shape” element of the “scope” can

support them to focus and locate where was the visual

part that the learner of the video was talking. Students

felt the video was “clear and structured” to

understand. One student report how they consider the

digital scope attached: “because you have the colors

and shapes, and you don’t have that when you are just

listening to something. It is sort of like a code, and it

is like being able to use some symbols to recognize

what you mean.” While students were using the

ReflectionScope to record reflection-in-action, the

tool could shape their recording behaviors. As a

result, when others watched one’s videos with the

reference of the digital scope overlay, the videos were

easy to understand.

The third dimension of efficiency is that the

reflective videos enabled students to qualify the

learning process more easily. Students mentioned

they could “see the idea development and trace back

to the idea root,” and “how the learner revised their

ideas.” They understood why the learner creates the

videos which can be the evidence to show the learning

process to others. We would like to quote one student

words about how they look back at the videos: “you

can look back what you have done, what you can

improve what you did wrong, you can keep on doing

what you did right. And also, when you need to do

your evaluation, you can look back, and you can see

actually what you did instead of trying to figure out

what you did, you actually know what you did.”

Students’ perceptions showed that the reflective

videos created by ReflectionScope have the potential

to support students’ transformative learning in

Design-Based Learning.

Video recording offers rich and genuine

information in the situation. With the digital scope

attached, the videos seemed well structured to watch.

Students could see how exactly the idea developed

along the learning process. ReflectionScope depicts

an efficient way to create reflection products that can

help students understand the learning process and

qualify the learning process.

7 DISCUSSION

The mechanism of ReflectionScope provides

contextualized prompts which encompass both what

to present and when to prompt students’ reflection.

Our findings showed that this mechanism could

support the teacher in providing specific prompts to

students actively, which allowed students to record

context-rich reflections with ease. Students could

develop contextualized explanations when they

articulate reflection-in-action. For students aged

ReﬂectionScope: Scaffold Students to Articulate Reﬂection during Design-based Learning Processes

177

around 13, their reflection-in-action process tends to

generate strategies of completing the task quickly or

of simple self-assessment (Davis, 2003; Thillmann et

al., 2009). ReflectionScope plays a vital role in

directing them to go beyond the routine way of

thinking in school and guide towards the appropriate

form of reflecting in action. ReflectionScope showed

them a way of timely answering the reflective

questions in related situations. In this manner,

students felt they were staying on track. Moreover,

they could have several reflective videos that

documented the vital moments of their Design-based

learning process.

In design-based learning classrooms, students are

engaged in self-directed learning processes (Loyens,

Magda and Rikers, 2008). The teacher’s role is

converted to that of a facilitator. Although the

teacher’s role is changed, his or her control of the

classroom can also ensure learning effectiveness and

quality. Our study may contribute to the

understanding of how a technological tool can

facilitate the teacher’s role of supporting young

students’ reflection-in-action.

The second design principle, of employing video

as the reflection representation, provides a structured

way to capture the context-rich information. The

digital scope (the question and the shape) cooperating

with the tangible scope (the camera) provides a

flexible perspective and structured way of capturing

context-rich information, i.e. the visually recording of

the real-world artifact links to their verbalization of

reflective thinking. ReflectionScope can engage

students in a quick and small reflection-in-action

practice which can run in parallel to the main DBL

activities. Without appropriate tools, such kind of

reflection moments during the process might distract

students too much from their learning flow. The result

showed that it can impact students’ recording

behaviors to a more organized manner with less

interruption to the learning flow. When students

began to verbalize reflective thinking, they focused

on the visual evidences related to what they had done.

ReflectionScope documented the reflection moments

in chronological order with the digital scope overlay.

This mechanism of visualizing has proved to provide

easy access to the information of the videos. Because

the digital scope included a reflective question and a

visual shape, it gave the audience a topic and a focus

on how to decode the reflective videos. With context-

rich information, ReflectionScope enables students to

trace back to see the authentic learning situations. The

reflective videos created by ReflectionScope are

prepared for benefiting students’ transformative

learning which requires deliberate observation based

on the documenting of learning process(Kolb, 2014).

The conventional way of teacher’s scaffolding of

reflection usually takes the form of dialogues in the

classroom with many students(Lewis, 2017; Kolstø,

2018). Therefore, the scaffolds cannot be consistent

and balanced for every student. ReflectionScope

depicts an image of how to enhance students’

experience of scaffolding. What we examined was

the added value that technology can provide within a

physical inquiry learning environment.

ReflectionScope incorporated the teacher’s

customized input of reflective questions. It has shown

tentative potential to optimize communication in such

a learning environment.

The limitation of this study is that we only

collaborated with one teacher and her two classes.

This DBL class only lasted two weeks, of four

sessions in total (three courses with ReflectionScope).

As we have not well developed the teacher’s input

system, yet, the generating of ReflectionScope

interfaces currently needs the assistance of the

researcher. Future work can involve the teacher to

examine the classroom communication processes

through the system’s intervention in a long-term

Design-based learning project.

8 CONCLUSIONS

This study examined how to support students’

reflection-in-action in a Design-based learning

classroom. We designed and evaluated

ReflectionScope to test the proposed design

principles. Our findings show that ReflectionScope

can scaffold students to articulate their reflection-in-

action in a contextualized way while connecting their

thinking with real-world artifacts. The reflection

products enable students to make sense of the

learning process. Our study shows examined design

principles on how to design a multimedia tool that can

support students to articulate reflection-in-action in

an appropriate form and creating collectively

accessible reflection products. We contribute the

scaffolding framework and related design principles

to design for scaffolding students’ reflection

articulation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We thank all the teacher and the students from the

International school in Eindhoven. The first author

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gratefully acknowledges the grant given by the

China Scholarship Council (CSC).

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