7.5 Sooner rather than later

Although reflection can often lead to an improvement in students' performance during the project, such opportunities will be lost if students view reflection as a process which only takes place after project work is completed.

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This bundle provides a structured mechanism within which students must exercise reflection through the conduct of the project.

The way it works is to have students use Watts Humphrey's Personal Software Process (Humphreys, 1997) to record the effort they have expended on individual tasks within a project, to use these records to assist them reflect on their work, to implement changes in the way they approach their work, and to track the effects of the changes.

This bundle fits within a project in which students are required to design, build and test a number of software modules, or similar deliverables. If used repeatedly, more benefits can accrue: assessors feel that students are working steadily producing real quantitative results and, over time, students development strategies change.

It works better if the student is not penalised for attempting process improvement which does not have a beneficial outcome.

It doesn't work when unless the project requires students to undertake a task or group of tasks on a number of occasions. It does not work if students leave the work until the last moment, and it requires a standardised set of documents. It doesn't work if students are able to exploit opportunities to fabricate results.

Reference Humphreys, W. S. (1997) Introduction to the personal software process, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass

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So: employ mechanisms which require students to shorten the cycle of reflection