Reflective Writing as An Assessment for Analysis and Synthesis Ability

            Analysis and synthesis of concepts is an important part of the higher order thinking skills described in Bloom’s Taxonomy, and providing students opportunities to practice these skills is critical to their undergraduate education. Reflective writing is one assessment technique that allows students to develop analysis and synthesis abilities, as well as refine their written communication skills. For a beginning landscape design course I have developed a series of three reflective writing assignments. The same image of a residential front yard landscape is used for all three assignments. In the first assignment, at the beginning of the semester, students describe the landscape in as much detail as possible. In the second assignment, after the principles of landscape design are discussed in class, students apply these principles to the image giving particular examples of how the design principles are evidenced in the landscape. In the third part of the assignment they describe the landscape in light of what we have covered regarding the eras of landscape design and the influences these eras have had on the contemporary design in the image. Data has been collected over the past four years evaluating how students have scored on a particular exam question where they must apply the principles of design to a landscape image. The data reflects two years with the reflective writing assignments completed and two years without the reflective assignment as part of the course. Class size, overall grades and other factors were similar between the two groups, but those students who completed the reflective writing assignments scored significantly higher on the exam question suggesting they were better able to apply information learned in the course.