Making Space for Reflection as the Semester Winds Down

The end of semester rarely looks the way we imagined it in January, and this one was no exception (snow and ice, anyone?) Maybe you had to revise your syllabus or delete a fun but not foundational reading or project.  Perhaps you had to down-shift to think pair share every. single. class. And yet: there was some form of progress, inchoate learning that will bloom in ways and on a timescale that we may never witness.  

Lest we dwell upon pedagogical dreams deferred too early, a few weeks of classes remain in which we might help students further consolidate their self-assessment abilities, one of the least developed and most valuable skills freshly-hired college graduates and new graduate or professional school students. In a recent American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Liberal Education opinion piece, organization president Lynn Pasquarella shares the results of a recent survey of employers and the skills and experiences they value in recent graduate new hires: “For employers, preparation is increasingly defined by learning processes students can demonstrate and less by accumulated knowledge.”   In other words, students who can analyze and interrogate their own thought processes (aka metacognition) are better able to monitor, assess progress, and adjust as needed.  

Supporting students in their reflection challenging tasks in particular, rather than illuminating the step by step of less cognitively difficult work, has enhanced benefits for future self-assessment.  A recent article suggests that differentiating between metacognitive experiences and skills can help refine students’ ability to self-assess: “…explicitly teaching students the metacognitive processes of self-assessment and supporting students in making their self-assessment metacognition explicit, educators may use self-assessment to foster co-regulated learning and develop students’ self-regulated learning” (Rickey, Panadero, and DeLuca, 2025).  

Some specific prompts to support self-assessment and learning transfer to future contexts (for more intel, review this Georgia State University blogpost): 

1. What were some of the most interesting discoveries I made during this class? About the subject? About myself? About others? 
2. What were some of my most challenging moments and what made them so? 
3. What most got in the way of my progress, if anything? 
4. How will I use the skills I have learned in this class in the future? 

As you wrap up the semester and look forward to summer, you may also welcome a chance to dig into your own reflective self-assessment—on your projects, or on the alignment between your everyday activities and your ultimate why. A  tool that’s helped many coaching clients self-assess and re-connect with or refine their “reason for being” is the Japanese-inspired Ikigai. And, if learning in community stokes your inner fire, consider joining one of our summer institutes to enjoy colleagues’ company, share teaching and learning inspiration, and get a jump start on your future teaching adventures.