=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Improving Social Practice: Enhancing Learning Experiences with Support for Collaborative Reflection
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-931/paper11.pdf
|volume=Vol-931
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ectel/DegelingP12
}}
==Improving Social Practice: Enhancing Learning Experiences with Support for Collaborative Reflection==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-931/paper11.pdf
Improving Social Practice: Enhancing Learning
Experiences with Support for Collaborative Reflection
Martin Degeling1, Michael Prilla1
1
Ruhr-University of Bochum, Institute for Applied Work Science,
Information and Technology Management
Universitätstr. 150, 44801 Bochum, Germany
{martin.degeling, michael.prilla}@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Abstract. In this paper we describe collaborative reflection as a core way of
informal learning at the workplace. From three case studies we derived
reflection on social practice as a good example for learning at the workplace.
The way employees talk to third parties like patients or customers was observed
to be a major topic in discussions within teams as it triggers the sharing of
experiences about cases and fosters building of mutual understanding of
common problems. We identified articulation to be a core part for this kind of
reflection and derived requirements which were than implemented in a tool to
support reflection on this topic focused on a healthcare setting and tested out
application to reflect on talks with relatives of patients.
Keywords: collaborative reflection, learning at work, articulation, social skills
1 Introduction
Besides technology support for the collaborative learning and extension of
knowledge, there are many skills that cannot be taught like e.g. physics but have to be
learned by experiences made during every day work. Although there is an overlap
between formal learning and learning by experience [5], e.g. when professionals
compare knowledge from vocational training to their experience, there are many cases
in which informal learning is the only way to create new insights on work practice.
This is especially true for skills and capabilities, which are crucial for performing well
in a job and delivering a suitable quality of work yet not taught well in education for
this job. Typical examples of such skills are learning strategies needed to
continuously stay on top of current knowledge needed for the jobs and social skills
such as the ability to communicate and collaborate positively and successfully with
colleagues, superiors, clients and other groups playing a role in daily business. For
such skills, informal learning and learning form experiences is indispensable, as, for
example, social practice cannot be learned but is a result of a continuous process of
comparing own behavior to that of others.
This paper reports on a core way of informal learning at work, namely
(collaborative) reflection. Reflection is a learning mechanism that transcends the
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teaching of facts or the combination of different perspectives to create new
knowledge. It rather suggests that re-thinking work practice in the face of current
knowledge can support and improve future practice. However, although reflection has
been recognized as a frequent and essential part of informal learning and there are
hardly any insights into processes of collaborative reflection and their support by
tools. This paper describes research aiming at closing the resulting gap. This work
will be described in the remainder of this paper by the example of supporting the
improvement of social practices at work.
The paper is organized as follows. First we describe a model of individual
reflection and informal learning to then broaden the view on collaborative reflection
and research done in that area so far. In section 4 we then draw on three case studies
in different organizations1. Due to the lack of insights into collaborative reflection and
in order to create an understanding of processes associated with it, the studies were
conducted in an exploratory manner, including interviews with the groups described
above and work observations. As an outcome, the studies shed light on collaborative
reflection of social practice in particular (section 5) and on process characteristics of
collaborative reflection in general.
2 Collaborative Reflection and Informal Learning at the
Workplace
Besides situations of formal learning in dedicated sessions where knowledge is
presented by teachers or facilitators learning at work is often rather informal [5]. It
happens when we experience new views on our daily routines by either self-reflecting
on who we do things or in discussions with others with whom we might compare or
that have different perspectives. Learning then takes place when conclusions are
drawn by comparing experiences with own knowledge or experiences of others. This
is what we refer to as reflection.
Figure 1 Reflection model by [1]
1 This work is part of the MIRROR project funded by the European Commission in FP
7. The MIRROR projects aims at supporting reflection in various settings, stages and levels.
More information can be found at http://www.mirror-project.eu/.
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Enhancing Learning Experiences with Support for Collaborative Reflection
Following [1] reflection can be defined as going back to past experiences, re-
evaluating them with the background of current ideas or feelings and conclude with
new perspectives and changes in behavior. According to [1] experiences are behavior,
ideas and feelings towards these (see Figure 1Fehler! Verweisquelle konnte nicht
gefunden werden.). Reflection means implicitly or explicitly remembering those
experiences, the last time a work task was done, when it re-occurs and re-turning to
how it was done e.g. by recognizing process steps that where burdening the last time,
but seem easier this time. Reflection is then triggered by recognizing the differences
and re-evaluating e.g. what caused them. What distinguishes reflection from
rumination is that reflection leads to outcomes in form of new perspectives or changes
in behavior that e.g. prevent situations in which a task re-occurs in an unwanted way.
It needs to be stressed that the reflection process described is not linear. Instead there
can be multiple iterations between remembering past experiences and their evaluation
which can lead to a deeper understanding of the experiences.
Reflection is therefore closely related to problem based learning (cf.[13]) which
does not require a link to past emotions and experiences. In addition reflection is not
singly triggered by problems but can also result from positive experiences.
The vast majority of research on reflection is done on individual reflection and
most models have a strong individual focus [9]. Collaborative reflection on the other
can be described as “people engage in finding common meanings in making sense of
the collective work they do” [8]. In difference to individual reflection those done in
groups has a strong need for articulation of experiences, therefore research has to
focus more on coordination and communication where sharing and mutual
experiences are the core elements [4].
Learning by collaborative reflection may then occur when an individual links her
knowledge to the experience of others [2] or when a group combines different
viewpoints stemming from its members’ experience and reflects on them
collaboratively [8]. As characteristics of collaborative reflection [15] identified
“critical opinion sharing” in discussions, “challenging groupthink” as opposed to stick
to norms, “asking for feedback” on own actions and “experimenting with
alternatives”.
Those criteria also match situations in which groups collaborative rethink
situations of social practice and interaction with third parties like customers since
those situations are re-occuring in general but each episode is different.
3 Related work: Tools for Informal Learning and Reflection
Since reflection is based on going back to past experiences tools to support
collaborative reflection and informal learning tools have been researched for quite
some time to overcome limitations of fading memories and uncertain remembering.
Various approaches were tested on their supportiveness.
One way is to use additional hardware and sensors that automatically collects data
which afterwards can be used to support reflection processes. For example a
SenseCam – a wearable camera that makes photos automatically – was used in [7]
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and [6]. The latter with teachers in training and their supervisors to support reflection
on lessons. The participants found the images of the camera to be valuable for
grounding discussions and supporting them with empirical data. This made discussion
with those that were not part of the lesson easier as it provided additional context
information. Nevertheless the bad quality of the camera images and missing
additional channels like audio made a extensive explanation of the camera wearing
person mandatory.
Others require participants to manually collect information e.g. in [11, 14]
articulations like diaries and portfolios proved their applicability and support for
individual and team reflection. Personal notes were used to discuss the progress of a
project after it is finished.
A third group of authors uses data that is generated during regular work tasks. In
[10] the authors described how data from light-weight collaboration tools for software
development can support the collaborative reflection on a project after it has ended.
They used the project management tool trac that focusses on support for ongoing
projects for a workshop in which students retrospectively reflected on the trajectory of
their work. Here the empirical data was found helpful to review details of the project
and discuss events in detail.
All tools developed show the usefulness of collaborative reflection to learn about
past experience. Especially they point to the advantages of additional data to foster
collaborative reflection (cf. [9]) and support memorizing situations. Nevertheless
most of the tools focus on support for formal learning or separated trainings of
professionals and require additional articulation work. Our studies focus more on
informal learning and we will propose a tool that integrates data collection into daily
work to keep the additional work as small as possible.
4 The nature of collaborative reflective learning: An Analysis
Do deepen our knowledge on reflection and especially collaborative reflection we
organized case studies at three different sites from health care and business
professions. For a deeper analysis of modes and types of collaborative reflection and
tool support cf. [3]. In this chapter we will focus on collaborative reflection as a
learning mechanism, derive requirements for tool support and review the cases studies
from these perspectives.
4.1 Methodology
We conducted three case studies to deepen our understanding of collaborative
reflection. The first case is a residential care home in Great Britain specialized on
offering support for elderly people suffering from dementia. The second case is a
medium sized IT consulting company based in Germany. Our study and analysis is
based on observations and interviews in these cases. We conducted two day
observations of two different people at the hospital and consulting company. Part of
the observation was shadowing of participants during their workday and participation
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in meetings. At the care home observation was limited to meetings due to concerns
about residents’ privacy. In addition we interviewed three to five participants at each
of the case study sites. Although this paper is focused to the initial two cases, which
are both from healthcare, we also describe the third case to broaden the empirical base
our insights stem from.
4.2 Case Studies
At the first case, a German hospital, our observation and interviews took place at the
stroke unit, which is specialized on the treatment of emergency patients that recently
suffered from a stroke. As the right timing after a stroke is of critical importance,
everything is organized around the process of emergency admissions and immediate
diagnostics. The stroke unit operates with three to five physicians depending on the
shift caring for up to 16 patients. They are supported by four to six nurses; in addition,
therapists join the team for initial work on recovery. All professions working on the
stroke unit are highly trained and specialized on strokes and other neurological
problems. Some of the assistant physicians work on the ward for several months as
part of their two year training to become a neurology specialist, others have already
passed that exam, but still participate in additional trainings regarding new methods in
treatment or diagnostics. Employees of the nursing staff have to complete a special
training, too, before they are allowed to take responsibility for patients without
supervisors. The group of therapists consists of specialists in therapy of various
disabilities that result from strokes like Aphasia or Paralysis. Besides formal training
to e.g. learn special skill in treating stroke patients, which are offered by the human
resources department in the hospital, there are additional, more informal learning
mechanisms within the ward to improve individual work as well as group
collaboration. For example, the three professions meet at least once a month in a ward
meeting to discuss issues affecting the whole unit and general work processes.
Besides that several smaller meetings like daily physician meetings, ward rounds,
chief physician rounds or therapists take place in regular intervals. Moreover, staff
working in the same shift meets from time to time on hallways or during breaks and
discuss cases or problems occurring during work. During these situations, members of
staff reflect on aspects such as their cooperation, the organization of the ward and on
treatment of patients.
The second case concerns British care homes for people suffering from dementia.
Here, care is not organized around emergencies but on daily work routines and
sustainable work with residents of the homes to support self-conscious living as long
as possible. At a typical care home, five to seven caregivers work with 40 to 50
residents. As the caregivers have no higher education and get just a two-week training
one registered nurse per shift is responsible for medical treatments. What
differentiates senior caregivers from junior caregivers is the experiences and time
spent in the job. This experience is crucial for the job, as the caring for people with
dementia is emotionally demanding, as residents may behave unexpectedly and e.g.
shout at staff (situations like this are called “challenging behavior” in care homes).
Exchanging insights and reflecting on such cases is already recognized as an
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important learning mechanism: Caregivers organize what was called in one home
“reflective meetings”, during which they talk about experiences with residents that
were difficult to cope with. In interviews, especially junior caregivers reported that
getting feedback and exchanging experiences with more experienced colleagues is a
fruitful way to get better in their job. Other occasions of getting together and
collaboratively discussing include the shift handovers, in which the nurses and
caregivers from overlapping shifts discuss the status of each resident, e.g. whether
they showed unusual behavior, and try to find new ways of handling those residents
with problems or challenging behavior.
The third case is an IT consulting company in Germany, which focuses on the
provision and adaptation of customer relationship management tools for
manufacturing companies. In that company our target group are employees from the
sales department, who are responsible for customer acquisition and handling the
handover from sales to other (development) departments. Learning in the sales
department is mostly self-directed and based on experiences from projects and client
encounters. They unregularly receive short trainings e.g. about new software features,
which are mostly on the web, but according to employees, the main part of learning to
improve professional skills is based in practice and self-evaluation as well as
evaluation by others. This is also mirrored in regular meetings of the sales
department, in which current client activities are described and the participants
discuss critical issue in these activities based on their experiences.
4.3 Analysis: Reflection of social practice as an indispensable task
Besides differences stemming from the variation in professions, we observed
similarities in all cases. While all organizations offer formal training for their
employees, we observed hardly any (official) support for informal collaborative
learning based on reflection: In all cases, employees used meetings, breaks or short
talks on the hallway to discuss cases, residents or customers with colleagues, to ask
for their assistance or to offer insights from their experiences to others. This was
especially the case for topics that relate to social interactions with those third parties
that could be grouped as “service consumers” (patients, residents and clients in the
three cases described).
For example, at the hospital we observed that especially for young physicians
talking to relatives was a critical task: They often have to explain difficult medical
cases to relatives without a background in medicine and these talks often include
conveying bad news like brain injuries patients may never recover from. These
interactions are only partly covered in formal educations of physicians. Therefore,
getting bad feedback from relatives or finding themselves in unpredicted situations
often causes physicians to talk about their experiences to others.
At the care home, we found caregivers to often discuss challenging behavior of
patients (e.g. behaving aggressively for no apparent reason) very often. Discussions
took place in breaks and meetings with other caregivers. In one meeting, a junior
caregiver reported a problem with a woman, who asked when she was allowed to
leave the care home several times per day. The caregiver had problems telling her that
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this is not possible and reported how this affected him emotionally. Senior caregivers
in the meeting then reported from their own experiences what could have caused this
behavior and explained how they had dealt with similar situations before. This helped
the young caregiver to understand how to deal with such situations and showed him
that these problems are not only relevant for him. In the meeting, the participants then
also agreed on ways to handle the requests of the respective elderly woman that were
supposed to be used by all caregivers dealing with her and similar cases in the future.
Reflection topics around social interaction with third parties were also present at
the consulting company. We observed consultants to often discuss habits and
behavior of their contact persons at a customer as well as how they performed in
recent presentations at certain customers. They even reported that these situations
would happen often and that they discuss issues with colleagues e.g. if they had been
together at a customer’s site. They see the experience from colleagues on how they
acted as valuable feedback for improving their abilities and welcome constructive
criticism.
It can be seen from the examples that collaborative reflection of social practice is
an important and common topic across the various professions we investigated. In all
cases we observed people to think and talk about the way they interact with customers
or patients. They discussed and compared with colleagues, especially more
experienced ones, to improve their skills.
4.4 The process of collaborative reflection and the role of articulation
Besides the identification of topics for reflection, we developed a reference cycle for
collaborative reflection, which is shown in Figure 2. The cycle is intended to derive
requirements and support the implementation of computer support for collaborative
reflection (see [12] for details on the cycle).
Figure 2 Model of Collaborative Reflection (cf. [12]).
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The cycle shown in Figure 2 can be illustrated with an example of reflecting social
practice from the cases presented above. In what follows, we chose the reflection of
conversations with relatives as explained in case 1 for this. It should be noted that the
cycle is not necessary linear, but that steps are interchangeable. For example,
individual reflection may happen during documentation, e.g. when a physician thinks
about a conversation while documenting it, and there might be multiple loops of
collaborative reflection in several groups before outcomes can be documented.
The cycle starts with the activity of documentation and data capturing, which in
the case of conversations is important to support the individuals participating in the
talk to remember the situations and their emotions during it in order to come back to
them. This sets the stage for later reflection and also enables individuals to
sustainably share experiences from talks with others (as part of their practice to talk
about them) and discuss them together when there is time for it.
Individual documentation of conversations is helpful for individual reflection and
enables physicians to reflect on talks some time afterwards, e.g. after they completed
their shift on a stressful day. Similar to offline reflection helpers like diaries, a tool
needs to support individuals in going back to past experiences on talks, to remember
situations in more detail and to articulate insights stemming from reflection of them.
As observed in the hospital, there is a need to share experiences from conversations
and make it available for sessions of collaborative reflection. Tools for this need to
enable user to share documented talks and to discuss talks that were shared with them.
This is helpful especially in work situations where time constraints are otherwise
impeding like during the day of physicians. Moreover, in meetings of physicians, the
group can come back to shared documentation and results from asynchronous
discussion and start a face-to-face reflection session.
For reflection on conversations to lead to improvement, there is a need to support
sustaining outcomes. The lack of means for this is a major shortcoming in daily
reflection practice, as it hinders the benefits of reflection from becoming visible to
others and to be implemented. The cycle shows that documented outcomes may then
serve as input for further reflections, e.g. when a physician changes her way of
conducted conversations and makes experiences on these changes.
As visible in Figure 2, articulation is a central activity for collaborative reflection.
This can be seen in the example: To start the cycle of reflection, physicians need to
document (articulate) the content of talks. Then, they need to articulate their thoughts
and perceptions on a conversation as part of individual reflection, as they are
otherwise not visible to others. Moreover, for collaborative reflection, they have to
articulate their perspectives and thoughts on talk documentation shared with them. To
close the cycle, there is a need to express insights taken from collaborative reflection
in order to make it sustainable and available for implementation. Therefore,
articulation support has to be considered a decisive factor in implementing
collaborative reflection support.
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4.5 Requirements for collaborative reflection support
Besides the importance of articulation derived in the previous session, it is obvious
that there is a need for human articulation in reflection of social tasks: These tasks
cannot be described (only) by formal criteria and social interactions cannot (only) be
learned in formal training. Rather than that, they are subject to informal learning
processes, which rely on communication and learning from peers – without
articulation, learning is only possible from observation and experiences remain with
the individual. Therefore, we regard articulation to be of central importance for the
reflection of social interactions as described in this paper.
From the above case studies, we can derive corresponding requirements for
articulation support in tools for reflective learning. As a prerequisite for these
requirements, we assume that articulation needs to transcend verbal communication in
order to become available to a larger audience and for reflection participants to refer
to details of articulated experiences. However, noting experiences often problematic
due to time pressure and other tasks to be done. For future tool development this
implies that:
Articulations have to be easy and unobtrusive to make: Users should be able
to document experiences 'on the fly', e.g. in a very simple interface that is easy to
use or by voice input. Articulation tasks should not cause much additional effort
or need a lot of attention. For example, the articulation of emotions during
conversations with relatives should be as easy as possible as they are not
necessary for work and would thus possibly not be done by medical staff.
Articulation tasks have to be integrated into work tasks: Tools for articulation
in reflection should be easily accessible throughout work and be closely related to
regular work tasks to lower the burdens of additional tools. In the case of
documenting conversations, it should therefore be avoided to cause additional
work by requiring physicians to document conversations in the patient’s folder
and in an additional reflection tool.
Articulation of experiences has to be accepted as valuable task: Since
articulation always causes some effort, tools need to show users that outcomes of
articulation and collaborative reflection are helpful – not only to the individual
that did the articulation task but also to others participating in reflection sessions.
For the reflection of conversations, tools need show users that documenting
experiences leads to improvements for their conversations sooner or later.
People need to be aware of articulated experiences: For documented
experiences to become usable in collaborative reflection, digitally sharing them
must result in recipients noticing their availability. This opens up the possibilities
for collaboration and mutual commenting. Taking the example of the hospital
above it would not be sufficient to add a paper to the patients case folder for
documentation of talks because this is only accessible in the patients room.
Articulations should be contextualized: As there might be many articulations
created over time and as reflection participants look for experiences and insights
suiting their respective case or problem, there is a need to contextualize
articulations, e.g. by referring to specific cases or actors that took part in
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experiences. In the example of reflecting conversations with relatives,
contextualizing could be done by grouping conversations on the same medical
disease or with relatives of the same patient.
The requirements above show how articulation as a key mechanism in
collaborative reflection support tools can provide support that can be handled and
integrated into daily work easily. In what follows, we describe a sample
implementation of these requirements.
5 Implementing articulation support for collaborative
reflection
Using the example of reflection conversations with relatives in healthcare, below we
present a tool built to support articulation and other reflection activities. In addition,
we reflect on experiences with implementing the requirements described above.
5.1 The Talk Reflection App – Documenting and Reflecting Relative Talks
In close partnership with the hospital described as one case we designed and tested
a tool that implements the collaborative reflection model described above and fulfills
the requirements described in section 4.4. The aim of the tool shown in Fehler!
Verweisquelle konnte nicht gefunden werden. and Figure is to support individual
and especially collaborative reflection of conversations physicians have with relatives
of patients at the stroke unit.
Figure 3 Individual and collaborative reflection spaces: Each documentation can be
viewed, shared and discussed. Assessments displayed in spider graphs for a quick
overview.
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The basic idea is that physicians working on the ward document conversations they
had and open them up to discussion with other physicians. It is already mandatory for
all physicians to document conversations they had in the patient’s folder by hand and
sometimes also separately on a computer to inform physicians in later shift which
therapy was agreed on or which measure to take in case of emergencies. To simplify
the documentation process the application we developed is designed for mobile
devices like smartphones and tablets.
The documentations are shown on the right side of the screenshot. On the left you
can see lists of documentations done by the users itself (1a) by others users that
shared the documentation (1b) and documented outcomes of collaborative reflection
(1c). The sharing of documents and a list of users that have access to the currently
visible document is shown at (2). The only additional efforts physicians have to take
is to make short self-assessments and answer questions about how they felt during the
conversation or what they think how the conversation partner felt during their talk.
These self-assessments are visible only for the person documenting and are afterwards
visualized (3) to make simple comparisons between documented conversations and
support remembrance. Least at (4) you can see the space for comments and notes.
Here annotations and comments of other users are displayed that can be used to report
on similar experiences or discuss want went well or wrong in the case documented
above.
Figure 4: Outcomes of collaborative reflection sessions can be saved and related to
cases
To support the sustainment of outcomes of reflections we developed a page to
overview the list of documentations (Figure ). Here users that did individual reflection
or participated in a synchronous or asynchronous reflection session can select on or
more cases that they reflected on (3) and document explicit outcomes e.g. changes in
procedures or good practice. Outcomes are divided into a short descriptive title (2)
and a more detailed description of the outcome that highlights the commonalities of
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the cases selected (1). Afterwards these documented outcomes are shared among
users of the app.
5.2 Implementing articulation requirements: Insights from design
We conducted two workshops with physicians of the hospital. They were planned
and carried out as part of a formative evaluation to prepare a broad roll out in the
hospital ward. The first workshop with three physicians was focused on utility and
applicability of the app. I the second workshop another four physicians tested and
evaluated a second prototype to test-drive the rollout in the ward.
Referring to the requirements described in section 4.5 we received valuable
feedback. In general users agreed that the application is easy to use and they had fun
making documentations with the simple, mobile interface. Nevertheless they had
several suggestions for usability improvements like a larger input fields for personal
comments and ideas for a more intuitive naming of certain categories. They also
discussed a lot about problems with auto-correction of medical terms by the mobile
OS and issues with syncing the content of the app with the server resulting from the
poor WIFI connection. The fact that all these issues came up during the discussion
shows the importance of this requirements and the need to improve user interfaces
and input methods to make them less obtrusive.
During our workshops we also discussed better ways to integrate the app into daily
work. As shown in Figure 3 we already implemented a button to export
documentations by e-mail, which allowed them to copy & paste the documentations
into the HIS, but due to the connection issues this did not work out very well.
Unfortunately a smoother integration with automatic synchronization, which would
be most comfortable, is not possible due to constraints of the IT department and high
development costs for program interfaces of the proprietary HIS. Therefore
participants proposed to give up the benefits of the mobile device and start using the
app on the desktop PC as well where they can easily import and export information
from on. This decreases possibilities to document cases outside the physician’s office
but they also reported that they used this option not as often as thought upfront.
We also stated that the articulation of experiences has to be accepted as a valuable
task. During the workshop we observed participants heavily referring to what they
wrote when explaining the cases again and using the documentations as additional
information to more blurry memories. We also received multiple feedbacks that the
app and discussions itself resulted in a higher awareness for the topic of
conversations with patients and relatives. On user requests we also added a checkbox
that says “I want to talk about this later” to raise awareness for certain cases which
participants would regard as unusual or more important. There were also ideas for
additional organizational support by introducing a bi-weekly meeting in which
assistant physicians could talk about documentations they did face to face in addition
to sharing them digitally.
The first feature to support contextualization of articulation we integrated was the
self-assessment form. These short questions were regarded as helpful for quick
assessments and during the workshops we agreed on questions that would better fit
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the circumstances like “How likely is it that I will think about this at home”. In line
with the model they asked for the ability to document cases more detailed e.g. to be
able to select from a list of topics like “therapy”, “diagnostic” or “information”. They
argued that this would help to find similar cases more easily.
While the workshops were conducted in a formative approach they showed that the
application and the underlying process and requirements are applicable to support
collaborative reflection of social practice at the healthcare workplace. The participants
had numerous ideas and scenarios how the app could be improved to fit better in their
workplace settings and already used it in the workshops to document, share and
discuss cases of conversations they had and wanted to reflect about.
6 Conclusion and further work
In this paper we described the importance of collaborative reflection for learning at
work. We focused on reflection as a mechanism for informal learning within groups
sharing their experiences. Those are especially relevant for learning for topics like
social practice that cannot be learned from articulated knowledge but is a result of a
continuous process of comparing own behavior to that of others. From two case
studies in healthcare and consulting businesses we identified conversations with
customers and patients to be a reoccurring topic in collaborative reflection. As an
example we took reflection at a hospital about conversations with relatives and
developed two prototypes that where tested with groups of physicians on their
applicability to support reflective learning about this topic.
The requirements that were elicitated during the case studies proved to be
supportive for tools use. We designed the tool to integrate into daily work as
articulation is already part of it. That notes are digitally shareable and less dependent
on the paper based patients folder was very much appreciated. In addition the fact that
the availability of the app raised awareness for the topic itself and fostered discussions
not only in workshops but also off the record e.g. in breaks or spontaneous meetings.
Nevertheless there are improvements to make in the ways physicians can use the
app as due to technical restrictions and missing wireless connections it was too
difficult to use the app since they had to go to a special room to synchronize data. In
addition further work has to be done to simplify technical integration between official
documentation and the Talk Reflection App to reduce double work as it sometimes
took place during the tests. But as the tests brought promising results and positive
feedback we will adapt the process and apps to other domains.
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