A reflexive writing workshop to enhance engagement with learning

As a module lead for a compulsory second year cognitive psychology module, I notice that students sometimes find the topic a little abstract and irrelevant to their lives and the wider world. To tackle this, I decided to create an online workshop in which students are encouraged to write reflexively about a topic they are interested in and relate it to their learning, with the view to publishing it in a magazine or blog.

This was inspired by a series of workshops run across my department during the Covid-19 lockdowns. These “special interest groups”, based on individual staff interests, were not linked with any grades or units yet they proved very popular with students.

How to organise reflexive writing workshops

Advertise the session on the online study interface, such as Moodle, and create an area where you upload all the related resources for students who might be interested but do not want to participate in the live sessions.

The live session typically lasts an hour.

Within the workshop itself, first introduce the aims of the workshop and available resources.

Then encourage participants to discuss their interests in relation to their study topics for around 10 to 15 minutes. Make suggestions as to what the students could write about based on these discussions.

Once everyone (including you) has stated what they will be writing, then embark on a free writing session, lasting between five and 15 minutes.

Spend the next 15 to 20 minutes discussing what was written or reading excerpts out. Do not pressure students to read out what they have written but read out what you have written. Even better if it is a very scruffy first draft.

Now it is time to co-reflect on the experience of free writing for the last 15 to 20 minutes. Start by reflecting on your experience, and then invite other participants to do so, if they would like to. Then you can comment on each other’s experiences and discuss about similarities and differences.  

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Give the students ideas and advice on where to publish it and how to approach the editor. My go-to magazine is the flagship magazine of the British Psychological Society The Psychologist, which provides fantastic opportunities for students and scholars to develop and publish their work.

Encourage the students to find more resources themselves. Add the resources the students found to Moodle and acknowledge their contributions, so that students become co-creators of the workshop materials.

In the next session, either continue focusing on the same piece of writing, or introduce new ideas. Be guided by students’ interests. Suggest a variety of publishing outlets, both formal and informal.

It is fine for the students to work on pieces on their own, outside the workshop. You could potentially host a mini virtual writing retreat if they find it difficult to work by themselves.

Helpful dos and don’ts

Throughout the session, the instructor should also be discussing their own interests, their writing, challenges they have faced with their writing and publishing. This should cultivate an egalitarian atmosphere and show to students that getting better at writing is a never-ending process for all.

Throughout the activity, maintain a positive, egalitarian, and non-judgemental atmosphere. The students can find criticism from their compulsory assessments quite distressing, so it is important that this workshop provides a non-judgemental haven. The students will be able to negotiate their writing with the editors anyway, which makes the activity highly authentic.

Do not pressure the students to publish their writing. It is absolutely fine to write for its own sake, and not in order to publish. It is important to focus on the process, not the product , especially if the student does not feel ready to publish their writing.

Note also that you do not need to attach the workshop to a particular module, it can be a free-standing workshop. In fact, I have found that students often write about psychology and learning more generally, rather than specifically about cognitive psychology.  You could include this activity as part of a personal tutor workshop. Furthermore, you could organise it so that each workshop builds progressively on the previous session and has a clearly defined developmental trajectory, so that the students can develop more sophisticated writing skills.

Finally, it does not necessarily need to be run as a workshop. Sometimes students ask for additional work. You could have a brief discussion with them regarding their interests and point them to the resource you created. I have found that when students come to me to ask for additional activities, they tend to engage much more with the publishing part of the workshop. Here are a couple of examples from an undergraduate and a Master’s student.

Encouraging students to write reflexively in relation to their studies, with the purpose of publishing their writing, can help them connect more authentically to what they are learning. It encourages them to link what they are studying to their own genuine interests, and relate their learning and experience to the wider world. Such an approach could be applied and adapted to most academic subjects.

Acknowledgements: I would like to thank all the students that engaged with the activity in one way or another. I am immensely proud of all their attempts to write, whether they published their writing or not.

Aspasia Eleni Paltoglou is a senior lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University.

This advice is drawn from the paper “Exploring the merits of including an optional reflexive writing workshop within a compulsory undergraduate module” co-authored by Aspasia Eleni Paltoglou, Heather Jayne Lilley, Vyjantikumari Lad, Maryam Hussain and Chrissi Nerantzi.

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