The courses I run have reflection at the centre of the learning process. It is not an add-on.
Group reflection works well in the discussion forums, but I still find it amazing that Canvas has no personal journalling tool. The assumption that a BLOG (public reflection) can replace private reflection is very questionable. I have students whoi are reflecting on very intimate aspects fo thier lives, and this leads to deep learning, Many would not even begin if they had to blog
For a long time I created "journals" as individual discussion forums with two members, student and tutor, each post was a journal entry, and the tutor could reply directly to comment on a post, or post a message as a more general comment. This worked OK during the course but very often with this kind of process they want to keep their journals. One can export crudely to Word but the formatting is messy.
I am currently experimenting with the Collaborate function which forces them into a Google Doc. I am not happy with this as I prefer to avoid Google where possible, and for the less adept among our students it is vital to keeep things as simple as possible and WITHIN the platform. But it does seem to lead to a more smooth output.
I still fail to see why Canvas cannot implement a functionality for personal reflection within the platform. It would not be difficult and reflection is such an integral part of learning that its absence is a real weakness. We need to be able to make the learning process visible to the tutor to support and guide it appropiately. It is a valuable affordance of online learning and it is surprising to me that it doesnt seem to form part of the pedagogical understanding at Instructure.
