Reflectivity is the catalyst for dialogue that makes good teaching contagious. Teachers take what they learn from their peers and put it into practice. Teachers are who teachers best learn from.

Danieli Parker | Hallsville Independent School District, TX

USE CASE

To provide a district-wide professional development resource

Danieli Parker

Director of Innovation and Instructional Technology

School/District:

Hallsville Independent School District, TX

A powerful tool for our district

Danieli Parker is the Director of Innovation and Instructional Technology for her school district in East Texas. Her role allows her to utilize technology to support teachers in becoming the most powerful educators they can be in the classroom. With experience as a former elementary teacher, assistant principal, and principal, Danieli understands the demands of the classroom through many lenses. These prior roles largely influence which technologies her district decides to invest in. 

In her mission to provide district-wide support, Danieli found the perfect ally in Reflectivity. No other solution could match its versatility and impact on optimizing peer learning and collaboration.

“Makes good teaching contagious”

In 2015, Hallsville ISD was recognized as a model PLC. Even with this recognition, they were still struggling to coordinate live observations.

“We truly believe in learning from each other and using the strengths of each teacher to build peer learning. But, the biggest challenge in scheduling live observations was making them relevant and meaningful to each teacher. We needed a 4th-grade teacher to observe another 4th-grade teacher, even if they were in different schools, instead of having a 4th-grade teacher observe a 2nd-grade teacher because of availability.”

 Everything changed in 2018 when they were introduced to Reflectivity + Robot. Instead of needing to coordinate live schedules for observations, or travel to different schools to learn from each other, these Swivl solutions enabled each teacher to record high-quality video and audio to be watched asynchronously.

“We would record short lesson segments and then watch the videos together during PLC meetings. The recordings were a catalyst to drive conversations. Teachers would pick up on things happening in the video that I didn’t even notice! This allowed us to have deeper discussions about instructional practices.”

Danieli firmly believes that peer-learning lessons are the gems that stick. “Reflectivity is the catalyst for dialogue that makes good teaching contagious. Teachers learn best from other teachers. They take what they learn from their peers and put it into practice.” The videos she has her teachers record are leveraged to empower her teachers which sustains their professional development throughout the entire year.

Built-in adaptability

Reflectivity’s versatile features offered the teachers at Hallsville multiple ways to collaborate. In addition to the deeper instructional practice discussions, and watching relevant recordings asynchronously, teachers have the option to share written reflections. They can join communities around specific skills, and share links to resources, to build a collaborative mindset, outside of watching lesson recordings.

“Reflectivity has been a game-changer for our new teachers. The educators coming out of teacher prep programs are lacking in their conversation skills,” she said. “They’re more comfortable messaging back-and-forth, which they can do in Reflectivity. They don’t experience any barriers to asking for help or finding resources. Reflectivity provides a comfortable space for both newer and veteran teachers to  converse about instruction.”

Creating your Reflectivity plan

Want to see what Reflectivity can do for your institution’s Instructional Coaching? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

The post Reflectivity makes good teaching contagious appeared first on Swivl.

Sarah Marin, a 7th-grade English teacher at Hildebrandt Intermediate School, assigns all of her students an end-of-year research project where they present on a country of their choice. This year, she gave her students the option to use Swivl’s new interactive reflection station Mirror to complete verbal project reflections. In previous years, she had her students complete their written reflections. In Sarah’s final tally, 59 of her students chose to complete their reflections with Mirror instead. 

Sarah found that introducing Mirror integrated seamlessly within her classroom assessment dynamic. Most of her students are 12, going on 13, and grew up being comfortable with technology, so they immediately gravitated toward reflection with Mirror. Even students who typically struggle to focus quickly grasped how to use Mirror.  For one of her neurodivergent students in particular, Mirror gave them an immediate confidence boost. Throughout the year, her student had struggled with focus and comprehension in other exercises. While using Mirror, however, this student took the initiative and easily guided themselves through completing the assignment. Her student intuitively understood the reflection’s workflow when presented through Mirror, and stayed focused on the objective throughout the reflection prompts.

Better student outcomes

Sarah loved that her students who chose to complete their reflections with Mirror answered with full fidelity. “It forced them to truly articulate how they had felt about the project,” Sarah explained. “Not having to talk to a teacher and feel judged really enabled my students to open up and use their metacognitive abilities.” 

Reflecting aloud prepared the students for a follow-up reflection discussion. “I noticed that some of the kids who did Mirror first did a better job on their overall reflection because they had already had to put their thoughts into words. It helped some of my students think more deeply about things they had struggled with, making it easier to convey their thoughts in writing.”

Those new dimensions of candor, gleaned through Mirror, provided Sarah with new insights into how she could support each student for the rest of the school year and how to structure the project for better results next year.

Sarah plans to continue using Mirror, seeing applications for self-reflection for next year. She is looking forward to using it at the beginning of the school year to measure each student’s comprehension. Sarah is confident she can use Mirror to individually support each of her students more quickly.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Kleb Intermediate School –  Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning, Kim Sharp, introduces Mirror with her co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, to their Advanced Humanities class.
• Klein ISD –  Monica Shallenberger, the Director of Professional Learning for the Klein Independent School District, uses Mirror to support her teachers amidst stringent state budgets. 

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Using verbal reflections to improve student writing appeared first on Swivl.

The kids were in awe of the AI capabilities and had fun customizing their settings to fit their personalities. They were surprised how in tune and accurate the feedback was on their reflections.

Monica Shallenberger | Klein Independent School District, Klein ISD

USE CASE

Providing teacher support with grant-funded tools

Monica Shallenberger

Director of Professional Learning

School/District:

Klein Independent School District, Klein ISD

Grade Level district-wide

As the Director of Professional Learning at Klein Independent School District, Monica Shallenberger needs to keep a global administrative perspective. She has the difficult role of analyzing funding across her district. Monica lamented that with state legislation, “Inflation gaps were not filled this year and have not been filled for six years.”  Although she doesn’t have to cut any of her teachers this year, she is unable to bring on additional support in the form of salaried staff. Tech solutions stood out as the obvious answer to get teachers the classroom support, with Title 1 funding. 

Monica is focused on anything she can do to support her teachers. In Texas, the workforce is drastically changing. Teachers are being thrown into the profession sooner, for hands-on certification, rather than attending student-teaching programs. “We have a lot of uncertified teachers in our district who are working on their certification while on the job. And that’s a very different type of classroom. They’re coming from these different experiences, but without the amount of training that you’d receive in that we all got in college education programs.”

Monica is excited about the possibilities Mirror offers for enhancing reflection and learning for both students and staff. Her teachers are using Mirror to support small group learning. “Teachers are so excited because it’s helping kids build their comprehension. They’re exercising their verbal skills, talking through their processes of learning, and then get actual helpful feedback. Our teachers are blown-away!”

Monica hopes to make Klein ISD a “heavily Mirror integrated district” while navigating budget constraints. She sees opportunities to fund Mirror through grants and Title funds, especially as principals around the district begin to see how Mirror is positively impacting teachers and students.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Kleb Intermediate School –  Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning, Kim Sharp, introduces Mirror with her co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, to their Advanced Humanities class.
• Hildebrandt Intermediate School – Sarah Marin uses Mirror in her 7th-grade English classroom for project-based learning assessments.

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Mirror: Helping teachers amid budget cuts appeared first on Swivl.

I found the color coding on each student extremely helpful. Assessing their tone meant I could immediately see the type of day each student was having.

Kim Sharp | Kleb Intermediate School, Klein ISD

USE CASE

Build reflective skills and improve writing outcomes

Kim Sharp

Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning

School/District:

Kleb Intermediate School, Klein ISD

Grade: middle school

As an innovative Instructional Specialist in Digital Learning for Kleb Intermediate School, Kim Sharp wanted to find new ways to gain insights into her students’ learning and growth. She decided to explore tech solutions that qualified for Title 1 funding. Her research led to Swivl’s new interactive reflection station, Mirror.

After receiving Mirror, Kim put the device to the test. Kim had her humanities co-teaching partner, Christy Stewart, create custom reflections in Mirror for each of her students to reflect on their writing processes. Their goal was to determine whether offering an option for students to record verbal reflections would help the students improve their written outcomes.

When setting up custom reflections for students to complete with Mirror, teachers have the choice to type out the “goal” of a reflection or to record themselves as they say the goal out loud. Kim and Christy decided to record the goal so the students would hear their teacher’s voice.

Students were initially hesitant about recording verbal reflections with Mirror, but after demoing how to use it, and hearing their teachers’ voices stating the goal, they quickly warmed up. The students even named their Mirror, Siggy after Sigmund Freud.

Improving students’ reflective skills

The more Kim and Christy used Mirror with their students the more they realized that their students don’t know how to reflect on their own. This made them realize that Mirror needed a dedicated place in their classroom. This newly minted reflection station helps students easily build their reflective skills.

After a student records a reflection with Mirror, Mirror’s AI generates immediate feedback based on the student’s response. Each piece of feedback includes something a student did well, and offers an unbiased insight into how students can improve.

Data grounded in education research and theory

As part of the feedback Mirror offers, teachers can access a dashboard containing individualized reflection cards for each student reflection. To generate the data on each card Mirror’s AI measures the student’s reflection against education research and theories from Piaget, Kegan, Erikson, Vygotsky, CASEL, and more.

Minutes after a student completes a reflection, teachers are able to dive into the data. Mirror presents an overall reflection score comprising sentiment, tone, and mindset scoring. It clearly lays out how a student understood the objective of the reflection, to name a few of the data points.

“I found the teacher dashboard extremely helpful! The color coding on each student’s reflection that assessed their tone meant I could easily see the students that were having a really good day. On the students where the analysis was red, I immediately knew where I needed to focus more one-on-one time.”

Helping students demonstrate how they are thinking

Mirror is helping Christy and Kim better understand the thinking patterns of each of their students. Mirror isn’t a linear assessment. Mirror is enabling Kim and Christy to see a better representation of their students’ thinking processes – in their words, “We’re able to see the students who always think outside of the box, and the students who need more support to think outside of the box.” For Kleb Intermediate School they have found a solution that provides better opportunities for students to process concepts and themes while expressing the depth of their thinking.

Read more about how Klein ISD educators are using Mirror

• Klein ISD –  Monica Shallenberger, the Director of Professional Learning for the Klein Independent School District, uses Mirror to support her teachers amidst stringent state budgets. 
• Hildebrandt Intermediate School – Sarah Marin uses Mirror in her 7th-grade English classroom for project-based learning assessments.

Interested in seeing how Mirror can support your students and teachers? Sign up to participate in a 30-day, free demo of Mirror.

The post Research-based feedback for students and insights for teachers, within minutes appeared first on Swivl.

We’ve all had that colleague that we’ve gained so much learning from while teaching beside them. I wanted to scale that. I’m setting up Reflectivity so that every teacher has constant access to valuable professional growth.

Karen Fox | Crow Creek Tribal School

USE CASE

Increase district-wide communication and provide constant access to professional development

Karen Fox

Instructional Coach

School/District:

Crow Creek Tribal School

Grade Level

Multiple grades across 21 teachers

Karen Fox, an instructional coach for Crow Creek Tribal School District, in SD, is nearing retirement. She is adamant about ensuring the professional growth of her 21 teachers won’t be diminished with her departure — and with Reflectivity it won’t.

Reflectivity by Swivl has been Karen’s go-to solution for empowering educators she works with. Reflectivity supports self-reflection and peer learning that hinges on written resources, video observation, and a community platform to leverage both. “I’m not going to be here forever but I still want them to utilize this tool that I know will enable them to learn from one another.”

In her previous experience as a superintendent, Karen understands the value of creating a safe, judgment-free environment for teachers to observe and critique themselves. Reflectivity is where they can receive feedback and learn from each other’s strengths. As she puts it, “Despite how people typically feel when they watch themselves for the first couple of times, I know they’ll learn so much from getting into the habit.”

A universal bridge for the faculty 

Crow Creek Tribal School is located on tribal lands and unfortunately, the leadership turnover has been high. The impact of onboarding a new administration affects the entire institution and can slow professional development to a complete halt. Reflectivity bridges the gaps between administrative fluctuation by providing actionable insights generated by teachers for teachers. The end result is streamlined teacher support and more time to work with students. 

When turnover occurs, “we end up focusing a lot of attention on the adults that could be spent supporting the students,” Karen notes. Reflectivity creates more stability for her district. It provides continual and much-needed support on the administrative and teacher level. It is a resource for coaching, conversation, and goal achievement. Constant access to these resources reduces lost growth opportunities between in-person teacher coaching sessions while improving overall communication across the district. Reflectivity is an immediate method of assimilating knowledge for application inside the classroom.  

Fostering a dynamic, risk-taking environment is the key to reaping greater rewards at the district level. “We expect kids to take risks every day for us. But why are we not taking risks in our own practice to help them to grow?” Karen challenges. Reflectivity creates that safe space for vulnerability and experimentation, enabling teachers to continuously learn, adapt, and transform student outcomes.

Creating your Reflectivity plan

Want to see what Reflectivity can do for your institution’s Instructional Coaching? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

The post Constant access to professional growth with Reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

Swivl’s commitment to supporting our initiatives has opened up incredible possibilities for studying and strengthening math instruction across America’s rural schools.

Dr. Cynthia Carson | University of Rochester

USE CASE

Long-term data collection in higher education research

Dr. Cynthia Carson

Academic Program Coordinator

School/District:

University of Rochester

For math teachers in rural districts across the country, high-quality professional development opportunities can be few and far between. With limited resources and colleagues nearby, these educators often lack access to robust training programs focused on enhancing math instruction and improving student outcomes. Dr. Cynthia Carson, an education researcher at the University of Rochester, and her colleagues from the University of Idaho, recognized this challenge. As a project director, she and her team have made online instructional coaching central to their research work — Project SyncOn (Synchronous Online Video-Based Development for Rural Mathematics Coaches). Throughout this research and as Dr. Carson’s team expanded their projects, Swivl has played a prominent role.

Over the past eight years, the University of Rochester has secured two major 4-year grants from the National Science Foundation to design, implement, and study a fully online professional development learning program. “We wanted a model that could connect teachers from rural districts nationwide and provide them with top-notch training opportunities right from their classrooms,” explains Dr. Carson. “The key was finding the right video technology to capture high-quality footage and audio of instruction while enabling easy sharing and collaboration.” 

Dr. Carson and her team decided to partner with Swivl for the software and hardware solutions that could power their initiative. Using Swivl Robot’s tracking capabilities, teachers could effortlessly record their math lessons from anywhere, capturing crisp audio and wide angle views. These videos, automatically uploaded to Swivl’s secure cloud library Reflectivity, provided instant access for coaches and researchers. Prior to Swivl, Dr. Carson had teachers orchestrate recordings of their classes using traditional cameras, transfer video to flash drives, and mail those flash drives back to the university. Poor file compatibility, postal delays, and low video quality created hurdles for their program and threatened the effectiveness of their research.

“Swivl’s ease of use was a game-changer,” says Dr. Carson. “Teachers didn’t need extensive technical skills – they could just hit ‘record’ and knew the video would be high quality and readily available for their coaches to review. We needed something that was easy, because we didn’t want technology to be a barrier for us in terms of getting the data that we wanted.” 

Privacy matters

Swivl’s impact went beyond powerful recording capabilities. Its robust data privacy controls allowed Dr. Carson to tightly manage video access –  a crucial factor in gaining approval for her research from university ethical review boards. Dr. Carson even recalled meeting with Swivl co-founder Vlad Tetelbaum who worked closely with her team to ensure compliance and additional security criteria for her research. 

Throughout the years, Reflectivity has continued to support the evolving privacy requirements for this project. “To preserve the privacy of data, Reflectivity allowed me to create groups between a teacher and a coach. The only people that would have access to videos posted in these groups were the teacher, the coach, and the researcher who was approved to see the data.”

Robust research support

Swivl’s time-coded commenting feature drives coaching conversations. Instructional coaches are able to pause videos, leave contextual notes at precise moments, and engage teachers in guided discussions around specific teaching practices. “With Swivl’s technology, we could move our entire professional development cycle into the online space,” remarks Dr. Carson. “From discussing and modeling lesson plans to providing targeted feedback on implementation, everything became more seamless and impactful.”

With multiple cohorts spanning rural districts nationwide, Cynthia’s research has explored the immense value her video-based model has had improving math instruction in rural areas and building teacher capacity. And at the center of this transformative work is the power of Swivl’s technology, eradicating geographic barriers and facilitating cohesive data collection.

Supporting research with Swivl

Interested in learning how Swivl can support your research projects? Schedule a consultation with the Swivl team to learn more.

Disclaimer: The opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Acknowledgement: This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Award 2006353. This work was supported by the US National Science Foundation under Grant Award 1620911. This work was supported by the University of Idaho.

The post Educational research now has no geographic barriers, thanks to Swivl appeared first on Swivl.

Julie Witczak, a middle school Communication Media Arts teacher and Mirror demo participant, interviewed some of her 7th and 8th grade students at Caruso Middle School, IL about using Swivl’s Mirror to support reflection after project-based learning activities.

Here were some of the responses:

What have you learned from using Mirror?

“Well from using the Mirror. I’ve learned that I need to be more positive and I need to be able to give better feedback. It’s also taught me what I should do to become a better person and to improve my work, so it’s pretty nice.”

And what do you like most?

“I like how it talks to you so it’s like you’re talking to a real person but it’s not a real person. You could say anything to them and they won’t judge.”

How has Mirror helped you?

“Mirror’s helped me a lot because I really don’t like writing for school projects and I much prefer being able to talk to it. I think it gives me good feedback and it makes my life a lot easier to not have to worry about writing a bunch of paragraphs for something that I spent a lot of time on already.”

What type of feedback did it give you?

“It gave me feedback I could use and it told me what I did and how well I did.”

What do you like about Mirror?

“I think it’s really good because I don’t like making journals and writing so I think Mirror is really good because you could talk through the questions.”

Okay and how do you feel like it’s helped you more than the journal writing?

“It’s helped us because we could really express how we feel about our projects without having to write it so I think we could really like like it just makes it much easier to talk about what you’re making.”

What’s the benefit of Mirror?

“I feel like it’s asking you different questions than it would on just a journal and that you’re just answering simple questions like what did you do in this project, how’d it go.”

“Yeah, I agree with that and I also think it’s making you answer the questions on the spot so it’s really testing you if you’re actually participating in your project or if you’re kind of just sitting there and saying whatever.”

Swivl Mirror demo

Want to experience the transformational effects of reflection with your students? Sign up to try Mirror for free for 30-days. During the demo your school will have dedicated support – from unboxing, personalizing Mirror for your goals, and anything else you may need to be successful with student reflections.

The post Students voice their Mirror feedback appeared first on Swivl.

Without that reflection, I would have never known that he was feeling that way about the material. Now, I am able to validate his feelings and break things down for him.

Mirror demo program participant

USE CASE

Identifying learning gaps

Mirror demo program participant

Grade High School

One of the Mirror demo program participants is a high school teacher with resource classes for students with IEPs and 504s. Her primary goal for each student is to build a bridge of trust with them so she can identify their learning gaps. She aims to work in tandem with each student to be able to give them the support they need to be successful in their work. A large part of her role includes tracking individual progress.

“It’s sometimes difficult for me to get into my students’ brains to help create a unique roadmap of success for each of them. Learning gaps aren’t always explicit until a student is failing. Until then, often students don’t trust or are intimidated by speaking to adults, which only makes my job harder. School years are short, and it can be difficult to make significant progress with students who aren’t comfortable taking a chance to build trust with me.”

When she first heard about Mirror she became excited about the possibilities it presented to save her time in tracking each of her student’s progress throughout the year. With Mirror, she was now able to have each of her students reflect on a project. Mirror would then automatically produce a dashboard of insights for each student, saving her time reviewing each individual reflection. All all of the data is kept in one central location.

“Mirror is beneficial for teachers but also for the kids. This is something I hadn’t considered when I first heard of Mirror.” The first time she had each of her students use Mirror to record a reflection she noticed students were more comfortable speaking authentically to Mirror than to her. She began viewing the device as more than a timesaving tool for her work. Mirror was a bridge to communicate authentically with her students, find hidden learning gaps, and build trust more easily with each of them. 

While viewing the first reflections her students recorded she noticed that one student remained silent during his first reflection. She already knew that this student struggled to voice how he felt about class and what he was learning. She was determined to figure out how she could help this student become more open and vulnerable while reflecting with Mirror. The next day in class she took a different approach.

Mirror helped me see what hurdles were standing in his way of success

“I began our time together leading a group discussion about what a reflection is. I defined the things I wanted each of them to think about while they reflected with Mirror. I took this approach because I realized for the majority of my students this was the first time they sat down and reflected on their work.

Once we had this discussion, the student who was silent during his first reflection recorded another. This reflection was completely different. He went into a lot of detail about what he didn’t understand about what we were learning. From the Mirror insights, I was able to see his frustration and high stress levels. I was able to know exactly what he was struggling with and how I could support him.

Without that reflection, I would have never known that he was feeling that way about the material. Now, I am able to validate his feelings and break things down for him. His confidence level skyrocketed, not just with the material, but with everything.

Mirror helped me see what hurdles were standing in his way of success.”

For this student, reflecting regularly with Mirror has helped him flourish in school. “He was even able to earn his first 100 on a test!” As a teacher, the excitement in this achievement is clear. “I’m excited to see what other transformations my students will experience with a regular reflective practice with Mirror.”

Swivl Mirror demo

Want to experience the transformational effects of reflection with your students? Sign up to try Mirror for free for 30-days. During the demo your school will have dedicated support – from unboxing, personalizing Mirror for your goals, and anything else you may need to be successful with student reflections.

The post Reducing learning gaps while gaining student trust appeared first on Swivl.

In Reflectivity I made a group where we meet, discuss things together, and the teachers watch their video recordings together. Because we can do this asynchronously, I can scale my coaching.

Tammy Tucker | Randolph County Schools

USE CASE

Professional development coaching

Tammy Tucker

District Curriculum Specialist

School/District:

Randolph County Schools

Tammy Tucker is a professional development coach in West Virginia’s Randolph County Schools, and has been a Swivl user since 2019. She has coached up to 12 schools in her district with an average of 7 teachers in each school virtually and in-person. Reflectivity enhances her ability to support those teachers, motivate them, and create a network wherein they can support each other. “Reflectivity is how I communicate with the teachers I coach. I encourage them to use the video feature, conference with me, and communicate with each other.” This structure has created a supportive ecosystem each teacher can use for their professional development.

Tammy designed a schedule where her teachers could engage in weekly written reflections, supplementing their current monthly video reflections. This process, along with discussion between teachers and feedback from Tammy,supports Randolph County teacher development through holistic reflection. “In Reflectivity I made a group where we meet, discuss things together, and the teachers watch their video recordings together. Because we can do this asynchronously, I can scale my coaching.”

A better coaching system

As Tammy plans to retire from Randolph County Schools and begin private coaching through ELFPD, she plans to continue to use Reflectivity. The collaboration of the platform and the video functionality are staples for Tammy’s coaching process. In her upcoming role, she plans to onboard her teachers on Reflectivity for its features. “I can bookmark key points in the video and leave comments about which part of the video to watch. It makes it easier to show larger teams and find key points to share with school administration.”

One of her conditions of taking on private coaching after her retirement was that she could still onboard the schools she works with onto Reflectivity. “I told the organization about the work that I have been able to accomplish with Swivl Reflectivity and Robot, and that I feel like I can’t be as effective at my job without using Swivl solutions.” 

As a coach, Reflectivity has enabled Tammy to build support and community for her teachers while enabling the schools she works with to have more control over their professional development.

Creating your Reflectivity plan

Need support getting started with Reflectivity? A consultation with the Swivl team gives your school dedicated support that effectively achieves your objectives.

The post I can’t do it without Reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

It’s a lost opportunity that students aren’t given more outlets to reflect at all levels of education.

Chris Eck | Oklahoma State University

USE CASE

Providing purposeful reflection

Chris Eck

Assistant Professor of Agricultural Education

School/District:

Oklahoma State University

Grade Higher Education

“Whether we’re talking about K-12 or higher education, allowing students an opportunity to reflect is important and I feel like we don’t offer enough opportunities for that, especially in our university classes, because of their high-paced nature. It’s a lost opportunity that students aren’t given more outlets to reflect at all levels of education.”

Chris Eck oversees both graduate and undergraduate students who are on a path to teaching and recently, he has incorporated Mirror into his graduate students’ curriculum. Reflection is a tenet the students are all familiar with, yet infrequently have the time and space to practice it organically within the confines of their demanding coursework. To remedy that, as part of their professional development in his weekly three hour class, Chris created a reflection station using Mirror. Mirror’s AI prompts generator enables Chris to customize reflection opportunities for his students to glean new insights into their thought processes every week. 

Chris is advancing his personal goal to provide numerous opportunities for structured reflection for his five graduate students and – based on their early success – plans to scale it to his 25 undergraduate students using Mirror’s Workspace. Workspace enables small group reflection and guided activities through teacher-driven automated workflows.

Responses to the data dashboard

With Mirror, Chris and his students now each have learning experiences tailored to their needs. Chris gave each of his graduate students a comprehensive overview of Mirror – including how they can leverage it as a classroom tool beyond reflections. “Each of my graduate students has a goal to become university faculty members. The first time they reflected with Mirror, I walked them through the dashboard and demonstrated how we could incorporate reflective data to drive our discussions. I wanted to expand their thinking by understanding the tool’s potential.” 

Chris’s two-fold approach provides structured context for reviewing reflection data. First, he socializes the benefits of reflecting with Mirror by providing a full overview of the dashboard, reviewing everyone’s reflection data together as a group. Second, he and his students synthesize the reflection data together, identifying patterns and themes. “We look at the data on the dashboard as a class to find themes of common struggles and use them as the starting point for our discussions. Or, conversely, we look at the data dashboard to find really great ideas, which create a new line of discussion that benefits everybody.” Chris has seamlessly integrated Mirror into his teaching, providing his students with an outlet for self-reflection and insights into their peers’ thought processes.

In their journey toward becoming educators themselves, these students find themselves at a pivotal stage for habit formation. Empowering them with structured reflection whilst keeping pace with their coursework, not only prepares them for the challenges of the modern classroom but also unlocks the benefits of reflection, for themselves and their future students. Mirror is a foundation to build strategic integration of reflective practices that not only enhances their own learning journeys but fosters growth mindsets and helps them become lifelong learners.

Try Mirror free for 30 days

Curious how Mirror can automate reflection in your classroom? Signing up for the Mirror demo gives your school dedicated support and an opportunity to try Mirror for free. Throughout your demo, our team will walk you through unboxing, personalizing Mirror for your goals, and anything else you may need to be successful with reflection.

The post Reflection belongs in higher education appeared first on Swivl.