Introduction

The final project for this class returns to the memo genre and asks you to reflect on your experience doing the work of the class. The course reflection memo is an opportunity to think about the goals you have set and how the work you have done over the semester helped you to meet those goals. This document is an opportunity to talk about where you’ve succeeded, where you’ve struggled, and what lessons you can take away from the class.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about what reflective writing is and how reflection helps you to become a self-regulated learner. Then, you’ll read about some activities you can do to help you prepare for writing your course reflection memo.

What Is Reflective Writing?^[1]

Reflection is an element of writing that is easy to forget to make time for. When we finish a writing project, we’re often on a deadline, and we probably have another project to start on. However, stopping to reflect on your work can help you to improve your technical writing process for the future. As Carmen Nobel (2014) wrote, reflection increases self-efficacy – that is, reflection helps us understand the decisions we make when we write and feel more confident about the next writing project we undertake.

As an introduction to the importance of reflecting on performance, read an article entitled “Reflecting on Work Improves Job Performance” (Nobel, 2014). Afterwards, work with a small team to complete the following tasks based on your understanding of the reading.

1. Identify the main point of the article.
2. Identify the evidence used to support the main point.
3. Discuss whether you agree with the main point, and supply explanations for your answers.
4. Discuss how the article applies to a student’s academic work in college.
5. Present your group’s findings in a brief, informal presentation to the class.

Self-Regulated Learners Reflect on Performance

When people reflect on their performance on a task or series of tasks, they focus on things they have done previously—by taking a close, honest look at personal beliefs, actions, and expectations—with the aim of improving future endeavors. To better understand how reflecting on performance might be applied in an academic setting, read the following case study and the information that accompanies it, which are adapted from the Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at Two-Year Colleges project (SAGE 2YC, 2017).

Although Tina feels discouraged, by redirecting her time and energy to more effective ways of tackling assignments, she can likely bring about a more rewarding academic experience, which, in turn, can boost her motivation and feelings of self-efficacy (her belief in her capacity to achieve goals). This statement is likewise true for all students. Key to making progress is learning how to reflect on one’s own processes, a step that is integral to the cycle of self-regulated learning illustrated in Figure 14.1.

Figure 14.1. Phases of the self-regulated learning cycle (Kirk, 2017)

In the cyclical process of self-regulated learning, a student plans for a task, monitors his or her performance, and then reflects on the outcome. The cycle then repeats as the student uses the reflection to adjust and prepare for the next task. We will now take a closer look at how to implement steps in the cycle.

Phase 1: Plan, Set Goals, and Lay Out Strategies

Before you begin working on a task for a class, establish a plan for completing it so that you can be efficient with your time and effort. The following prompts can help you develop a plan.

• Analyze the learning task. Is it a task you have done before, or is it something new? Does it build on a homework or in-class activity you completed in the past? How much time will it take? How much focus will you need?
• Set goals. How will you structure the task? What are the intermediate checkpoints and sub-goals? For example, can you complete an outline with two weeks to go and then a rough draft one week prior to the due date? That plan would likely allow you time to seek out extra help as needed.
• Plan strategies. Will you need resources from the library, and how can you go about finding them? Will you need to book appointments with a writing tutor and your instructor? Given your needs, when should you get started on the task?
• Set expectations for the outcome. Given how much time you have available, your strengths and weaknesses, and your current standing in the course, what type of outcome would you like?
• Work out how to proceed if obstacles arise. For example, if you do not understand some of the assignment directions, plan to ask the instructor for clarification during office hours.

Phase 2: Use Strategies and Monitor Performance

In this phase, proceed with your plan. Because you have already created the plan, you can now focus exclusively on carrying it out. Here are some key points to consider as you work through this phase.

• Think carefully about the actions you take and their effectiveness. For example, you might think, when I studied in a quiet location in the library, I completed the reading more quickly than when I read at home. Record the observations in a notebook for future reference. Some instructors require students to write reflective assignments, and your record of observations may be useful for that type of assignment.
• Monitor progress on your goals and sub-goals.
• To help you with this work, consider using the Work Log discussed in Chapter 11. This simple document can help you keep track of how much work you’ve done and what type; you can also edit the log to include any notes that help you monitor or evaluate your performance.

Phase 3: Reflect on Performance

Reflect on the outcome of your efforts: in other words, think about how you did on a particular assignment, why you earned the score you did, and how you can use the knowledge to improve future outcomes. Take into account the following points while reflecting.

• Compare your performance to your main and sub-goals rather than comparing it to other students’ performance. Reflection requires looking inward for answers rather than looking at how others did.
• Consider the effectiveness of your plan. Did it produce the outcomes you aimed for? If not, what changes will you make to a plan for a future assignment? How did your timeline for achieving sub-goals work out? What changes would you make to a similar timeline in future?
• Consider the effectiveness of the individual strategies you outlined as part of your plan. Did you implement the strategies? Did you select appropriate strategies? If not, what other strategies can you try next time?
• Use your thoughts about your performance to plan for a future task. How will you adapt your approaches to planning, using strategies, managing time, and monitoring your performance?

Again, the phases outlined here are cyclical, meaning that they should continue during a semester and throughout your academic career as you refine your approaches to assignments. Writing is a skill, and skills can be developed with work. For the work to be maximally productive, a writer needs to consider the tactics he or she uses when preparing assignments and how those tactics might be modified when preparing future assignments to produce different results. In other words, the writer needs to reflect on performance.

Creating a Course Reflection Memo^[2]

A performance reflection usually asks you to do the following:

1. Discuss what you did and why.
2. Reveal the results of your actions.
3. Identify what you learned as a result of the experience.
4. Articulate how you will apply what you learned to future experiences.

Notice that the list is numbered, which indicates that the steps proceed in a sequential order. In other words, to establish context for the reader’s benefit, you must first discuss what you did before writing about how you will apply the knowledge gained through the experience to future endeavors.

To create your course reflection memo, you’ll need to think through the work you’ve done for each of the projects in this course along with the feedback you’ve received over the course of the class and the goals you set in the course goals memo. Below, you’ll find three activities designed to help you do just that. Use these activities to generate material for your course reflection memo.

Activity A: Reflect on Your Performance

Although the list above provides a skeleton outline for writing a reflection on performance, you may also use pre-writing strategies to build momentum for your memo, to assemble connections between your thoughts and what the assignment asks you to do. To begin compiling thoughts about the assignment, read through your notes about the actions you took and the effectiveness of the results (see “Phase 2: Use Strategies and Monitor Performance”). Afterwards, try a free-writing activity to see what further ideas come to mind about the assignment.

The following directions for free-writing are adapted from Wilfrid Laurier University (n.d., “Free-Writing Activity”).

1. Set a timer for three minutes.
2. Write freely and honestly about your performance until the timer buzzes.
3. Review what you have written.
4. Underline keywords or ideas that might require further exploration or thinking.
5. Set the timer for another three minutes.
6. Write freely and honestly about the keywords or ideas that you underlined until the timer buzzes.
7. Review what you have written.
8. Think about how you might use the free-writing notes to reflect on performance in your assignment.
9. Disregard extraneous or off-topic information from your free-write when producing your draft.

Activity B: Review Your Goals

To understand your work during the course in the proper context, it’s important to review the goals you set when you started the course this semester. Access your course goals memo and reread what you hoped to accomplish during the course. In the space below, write down each of your course goals.

Then, review the projects you have completed over the course of the semester. As you look through your work, write down any evidence you find that shows how you have worked on each of your goals. This information will give you a basis to discuss what you have achieved from working on your technical writing skills during the class.

Activity C: Review Your Writing Assignment Feedback

Reflect on your performance in this writing course by revisiting your assignment feedback to identify positive aspects of your documents and areas for improvement.

Once you have compiled some initial ideas for the assignment through free-writing, you may also decide to create an outline to formalize plans for your paper. Use the first set of numbered steps in this section as a starting point for an outline.

Conclusion

Your course reflection memo is the last project in the course, and it gives you time to rethink the work you’ve done over the semester. As this chapter indicates, reflection is a critical technical communication skill, so taking time to do so is important – reflection helps you integrate the lessons you have learned so that you can improve your writing process in the future. That is to say, whatever you learn in this course, you can extend to any course or professional writing situation you face in the future. From here, you can continually improve your writing and design skills, as well as the processes you developed to execute projects. Happy writing!

References

Kirk, Karin. (2017). The cycle of self-regulated learning [Figure]. Supporting and Advancing Geoscience Education at Two-Year Colleges. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Retrieved 18 July 2025, from https://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/self_regulated/what.html.

Nobel, Carmen. (2014). Reflecting on work improves job performance. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge. Retrieved 18 July 2025, from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/reflecting-on-work-improves-job-performance

SAGE 2YC. (2017). What is self-regulated learning?. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0. Retrieved 18 July 2025, from https://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/self_regulated/what.html.

Wilfrid Laurier University. (n.d.). Reflective writing, section D: Writing a reflection. WriteOnline.ca. License: CC-BY-NC. Retrieved 18 July 2025, from http://writeonline.ca/reflective-essay.php?content=section4.