1. I. Nahon Introduction Reflection is an important part of being a professional clinician 1. Reflective practice is not something that comes naturally to students and should be taught. Guiding students through reflective journaling has been shown to be an effective way to teach students to develop critical thinking and self-monitoring 2. Traditionally these journals have been paper based journals 3. In modern technology there is scope for developing electronic journals, utilising Wikis, blogs or video input. This paper looks at the evaluation of an electronic based reflective journal in the form of a wiki. As the students for whom this is being developed are not yet going out on placement, the wiki was piloted amongst students doing D4OL and staff in the physiotherapy department. References 1.Australian Physiotherapy Council. (2006) Australian Standards for Physiotherapy. 2.Canberra: Australian Physiotherapy Council. 3.Williams RM, Wessel J, Gemus M, Foster-Seargeant E.(2002) Journal writing to promote reflection by physical therapy students during clinical placements. Physiother Theory Pract 18(1):5–15. 4.Constantinou, M., Kuys, S.S. (2013) Physiotherapy students find guided journals useful to develop reflective thinking and practice during their first clinical placement: a qualitative study. Physiotherapy, 99, (1). 5.Smith, M., & Trede, F. (2013) Reflective practice in the transition phase from university student to novice graduate: implications for teaching reflective practice. Higher Education Research and Development, 32, (4)) p632-645.. 6.Chiu, C-Y., Wu, Y-T., Hu, M-H., Lin, J.-T. (2013) Reflective learning in physical therapy students: Related factors and facilitative effects of a short introduction. Social and Behavioral Sciences 93, 1362 – 1367. 7.Findlay, L. (2008) Reflecting on ‘Reflective practice’ PBPL Paper retrieved from: www.open.ac.uk/.../Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective- practice-PBP on 25/04/15www.open.ac.uk/.../Finlay-(2008)-Reflecting-on-reflective- practice-PBP For additional information, please contact: Dr Irmina Nahon, PhD Clinical education Coordinator Physiotherapy University of Canberra Refinements One of the respondents suggested that students need to have a basic understanding about how to do reflection before we can expect them to do it. Several authors support the need for education before practice 3, Chui et al however suggest that practice only improves personal efficacy and not journal quality or scores on the reflective in learning scale 5. They recommended having an increased emphasis on and more practice in writing would improve results. There is significant debate on whether keeping reflections private or to open them up to comments from others is better. Smith and Trede suggest that “reflection in practice may be more of a social enterprise than an individualistic pursuit” (p633). However, there is also a school of thought that private reflection is more likely to be honest and deeper as there is no fear of criticism 7. It is planned to ask the students after their last placement to reflect on the reflective process and question them on their preferred way to develop the skills in reflective practice. ENCOURAGING REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS Wiki design and testing The wiki was designed to be simple to use and functional in its outcome. Students are often do tasks to ‘tick the box” rather than seeing the long term worth. There are 3 parts to the wiki: 1)a goal setting exercise. Students are asked to set goals for the placement and to discus them with their clinical educator. 2)Weekly reflections. Using either the format suggested or a format prescribed by the clinic, students are asked to go thru a reflective exercise. 3)An evaluation from the student on the placement at completion. This task is to provide feedback for clinical educators to reflect on. Students are able to record, film write or type reflections as they prefer. Providing multiple modalities will allow students to use a medium they are comfortable with. Staff and colleagues were asked to use the tool as if they were a student as well as provide feedback on the exercise. Plan for future evaluation After a cohort of students has competed a full series of 5 clinic placements it is the plan to evaluate the series of reflections to see if they change over time. The development into reflective practitioners is proposed to be easier if the practice of reflection is embedded within real experiences 4. It is anticipated that over time students will see the value of reflection and develop more insight into the tasks 3. Results 3 fellow students participated and gave feedback on the wiki. Those who provided a reflection as a student would demonstrated that the instructions used in the task are appropriate to the aim. Feedback on the task was also very positive. “It was simple to use and I liked trying to make a video of myself much quicker than typing” S3 “We reflect in our head, it is very different to reflect on paper, I found myself going much deeper than I normally do” S2 “At ** Hosp, we have our own reflection tool, it is good students can upload that” S2 “Getting students to reflect on what their clinical educator discussed with them is really important”. S1 There were several suggestions for improvement: Provide formal teaching on how to reflect Having the wikis available for small groups to comment on and provide feedback on Using prompt questions to start reflections To have the wiki on an open platform (outside Moodle) so clinical educators can access them.