Reflection diary for virtual mobility

Euroguidance Estonia with its partners took up the challenge, due to the world-wide pandemic, of  organizing and hosting a virtual mobility – e-Academia twice in 2020 with the headline “Career guidance in higher education and employment offices: how to support learning and CMS development” for an international group of practitioners. It posed an interesting question – how to make the experience as impactful as a real physical visit? How to engage everybody in a meaningful way that makes sense for them? 

E-Academia had a well thought through schedule with different technical approaches and this is where we implemented a reflection diary as an integral part of the process in each part of the virtual mobility. The reflection diary was a private pdf document where the participants could write in during the mobility or print it out when wanting to do it on paper. 

The first part of the diary focused on individual preparation: what are the expectations on learning outcomes? It required each participant to prepare some points and questions based on the materials they were asked to read before the first meeting.

During the mobility, the days had different themes, where the diary helped to process the experience with questions like:  

• 3 ideas I take with me
• If you were asked to write an article about the session, what would you share? Write the possible messages you would focus on.
• The most interesting discoveries for me are
• Main differences between countries
• I would like to know more about
• The practice I want to share with other participants will focus on
• Interesting practises I learned
• Notes that made me think
• Note that made me see the world differently
• My super awesome note
• Visualise your note here
• Networking – 3 things we have in common or I would like to learn from him/her
• Thoughts about the mobility experience

The diary finished with a conclusions page where the participant is asked to bring out the new things they learned overall and about themselves and self-assess their learning outcomes.

Both the hosts and participants found that this was a useful tool to support the learning during virtual mobility, which was a new experience for all parties and required new skills and participation.