The Art of Reflection

I was listening to our national radio broadcaster (CBC) interview a botanist, Lyn Baldwin, at one of our BC universities and she was describing what she used to do when she'd go out on a field walk. She always took her handy notebook to jot down what she observed, however she realised this use of text lacked sufficient description to what she was seeing. Thus, she decided to take art lessons so that she would be able to do more with her journalling by adding her impression of what she saw through drawings. These are on display at the Kamloops Art Gallery "Not Just a Snapshot" (Jan9-Feb1).

She found that her artwork enhanced her ability to do better reflections. This makes sense. Words can only go so far to describing something one is thinking about or is reflecting on based on something they have seen, smelled, touched or heard. I spend a lot of time reading student reflections and sometimes, although for most part what I read is very thoughtful, they still lack something that had they had the opportunity to draw what they saw or felt, maybe it would allow them to express themselves better.

At this point, the method of entering the reflections is through a web interface where they simply type in their reflection. I log in as a faculty member, and can read them. We have become incredibly text oriented in our modern age of technology. I communicate almost exclusively via text in some form or another to my health mentor students. Yes, they have all met me once or twice but after that it is all online. Am I missing something from them? Students feel so comfortable with this approach since most of them communicate the majority of their time to their own friends, via text. Yes, they do take photos like crazy and post "selfies" on Facebook but does that really communicate everything?

Should we expect something different in their reflections? When I read how excited they are to see an accessible home for the first time and discover how homey it feels, wouldn't it be neat to see a drawing of what they saw or a photograph (as long as they get consent if a person is in the photo)? I know that many of our students are incredibly gifted artists with one form or another but when do they have an opportunity to use these talents outside of the Medical School Spring Gala or the "Do Bugs need drugs" video project. I would love to see more creative ways for students to express themselves in a reflection. The question is whether our online learning modules allow for this to happen easily. Guess I better start figuring this out! Love any suggestions if any other school is already ahead of us.