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A Model of Retrospective Reflection in Project Based Learning 419
tools. The latter includes tools frequently associated with Web 2.0, e.g. wikis, instant
messaging tools, and discussion forums. Today’s students regularly use such tools to
coordinate and perform their activities, whether imposed by school or not [7, 8]. Adding
to the picture, students in higher education generally expect to have flexibility of
time and place for work. From the point of view of course organizers, lightweight tools
are inexpensive options providing flexibility of use and functionality well known to
students and course staff.
A core argument in what follows is that by supporting various aspects of work
throughout a project, lightweight tools collect historical data with a potential value to
help the students recall what happened in the project and reflect on it.
The objective of the research in this paper is to provide a general account of retrospective
reflection in the above described type of project based learning setting. We
draw on empirical research on software development (SD) student projects: mainly
published work [9-11] and some additional findings. We provide a substantial new
contribution by situating the results in a theoretical framework, generalizing to project
based learning independent of work domain and presenting a model which can be
used to aid the organization of retrospective reflection in project based learning.
In Section 2, we outline the empirical research on SD student projects. We present
our theoretical framework in Section 3, and in Section 4 use it to analyze findings
from the student projects. Section 5 outlines our conceptual model of retrospective
reflection. Section 6 concludes the paper.
2 Empirical Basis: Research on SD Student Projects
In this paper we draw on findings from research on SD student project teams in the
period 2006-2008 focusing on the teams’ use of collaboration technology. The project
course is arranged in the last (6th) semester of an IT undergraduate program. Teams
of 3-5 members develop software for genuine customers. The main learning objective
is to get experience with SD work in a team for a customer. Project deliveries include
a software product and a report. The teams choose which collaboration and development
tools to use, depending on customer requirements, team members’ prior experience,
team members’ wish to learn, and the availability of the technology.
The data collection in the studies on these teams includes in-depth, longitudinal
non-participant observation, semi-structured interviews across the cohorts, and examination
of project documentation. A constructivist view of learning as well as
guidelines for interpretive field research [12] guided the data collection and analysis.
2.1 Retrospective Reflection Based on Participants’ Memory
The adoption of a retrospective reflection technique from SD industry [13] in the SD
project course was subject to a qualitative study [10]. Facilitated reflection workshops
were conducted with 10 student teams at the end of their project. Each workshop
lasted about an hour and started with participants’ individually drawing project timelines
incorporating events they perceived as important to the project, and along the
timelines, ‘satisfaction curves’ indicating their feelings about the project over
time. From the individual timelines, the teams constructed shared timelines on a
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