Writing Your Reflection
Most completion tasks — KNoT, Project and the final Completion Evidence — ask you to reflect on what you did. This page is the toolkit for all of them: prompts, sentence starters, the five areas a strong reflection covers, and further reading.
It should not be an onerous task to develop skills around reflective practice — more an opportunity to draw a thread through the course, and tie the knot, so to speak. A reflection can take any form you like.
Describing what happened is the easy and less interesting part. A reflection also says what it changed — in your thinking, your assumptions, or what you will do next. If none of that is there, it is still a description.
Prompts and starters
You don’t have to use a prompt. But if you are staring at a blank page, pick one and go deep — 200–500 words on a single prompt.
Looking back over the whole course. For the holistic reflection, consider:
- how your plan changed or developed over the course
- serendipitous opportunities — the ones that worked out, and the ones that didn’t
- ideas you have collected along the way
- KNoTs you would like to see included, or wish you could create
- how you might take your learning in SoCIETIE further
- the advice you would give a future student
Going deeper on one experience. These work for a single KNoT or completion task as well as the final reflection. Each runs through the four stages of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle — the experience itself, what you noticed, what you make of it, and what you will try next.
An idea from outside your discipline (LO1)
- Concrete experience — a moment in a KNoT where an idea from another field landed.
- Reflective observation — what did you notice at the time, in the work or in your own reaction?
- Abstract conceptualisation — what does it let you see that your own training doesn’t? What does your training see that it doesn’t?
- Active experimentation — where will you use it next: in your Project, or the rest of your degree?
Working across difference (LO2)
- Concrete experience — a time when people worked or communicated differently from what you are used to.
- Reflective observation — what actually differed: the pace, the directness, who spoke, how decisions got made?
- Abstract conceptualisation — what is gained by working their way? What is gained by working yours?
- Active experimentation — how will that change how you walk into the next room?
Where influence comes from (LO3)
- Concrete experience — a point where you tried a different approach to the one you started with.
- Reflective observation — what shifted: the work, the relationships, how people responded to you? What didn’t?
- Abstract conceptualisation — what does that tell you about how change actually happens here?
- Active experimentation — what will you do differently the next time you want to shift something?
What energised you (LO4)
- Concrete experience — a KNoT or Project activity that left you surprisingly energised, or pushed you past your comfort zone.
- Reflective observation — what specifically did it: the task, the people, the pace, the purpose?
- Abstract conceptualisation — what does that tell you about the work you want to do?
- Active experimentation — what is your next learning goal, and what will you do to work toward it?
Adapt these to your own experience:
- “Before this KNoT I already knew […]. In this experience I learned […].”
- “My assumption going in was […]. That was challenged when […].”
- “It clicked when […], which made me realise […].”
- “I first tried […]. Later I tried […] instead, which worked better / worse because […].”
- “My next learning goal is […]. To work toward it, I plan to […].”
Stuck halfway? A reflection most often stalls between reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation — you have written what you noticed, but not what you make of it. That is the step that turns a description into a reflection, so if you are staring at the page, ask what the experience tells you in general, and what you will do differently because of it. The prompts tab walks all four stages.
If you use AI to help develop your reflection, rewrite it in your own words before you submit. A reflection that isn’t yours does nothing for your learning.
If you want to go further than the prompts above:
- ANU+ Short Reflection Guide — Rubric, Development Outcomes, Prompts (PDF) — the guide the five areas and prompts on this page are adapted from, including the rubric ANU+ mark against.
- Reflectors’ Toolkit, The University of Edinburgh — practical structures for reflecting, and what to do when you get stuck.
- Models of reflection, University of Cambridge — Kolb, Gibbs, Schön and others side by side, if a different framework suits how you think.
More resources on reflection.
- Harvey, M., Lloyd, K., McLachlan, K., Semple, A-L. and Walkerden, G. (2020) Reflection for learning: a scholarly practice guide for educators (PDF). Advance HE. — Tested activities for teaching reflection, from the Reflection for Learning Circle.
- Ellerton, P. (2024) A pedagogical schema for expertise in Teaching for Thinking (PDF). Presentation to the Queensland Association for Gifted and Talented Children, 24 May 2024. University of Queensland. — Naming the cognitive targets behind student thinking, and giving feedback on its quality.
- Teaching Commons (2023) Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning: what it is and how to use it in teaching (PDF). Food for Thought no. 16. York University. — Fink’s six components, including the metacognitive “learning to learn” that reflective tasks assess.
The five areas a strong reflection covers
Read your draft back against these. You don’t need all five — but if you can’t point to any, keep writing. For LAWS4001 they are a useful self-check against the quality of narrative and/or reflection criterion.
| Area | A strong reflection… | It falls short when… |
|---|---|---|
| Lightbulb moments LO4 |
Names a moment in a KNoT or your Project where something clicked, and what you were doing at the time. | It stays general — what happened, but not where you were in it. |
| Old knowledge, new learning LO1 |
Says what you brought in from your own discipline, then what a KNoT added to it, changed, or contradicted. | Prior knowledge is asserted but never connected. |
| Thoughts and feelings LO2 |
Is honest about discomfort, energy or surprise, and says what you did differently as a result. | Feelings are mentioned in passing, with nothing following from them. |
| Alternative action LO3 |
Shows you tried something different, and reads the effect on the people and context around you. | “I could have…” — no experiment, no result. |
| Next actions LO4 |
Sets a goal specific enough to act on, and says where you will practise it. | The goal stays general (“communicate better”), with no plan. |
LO1–LO4 are the SoCIETIE learning outcomes; between them, these five areas cover all four.
Acknowledgement — with thanks to ANU+
The five areas, the prompts and the sentence starters are adapted, with thanks, from the ANU+ 2026 Short Reflection Guide — Rubric, Development Outcomes, Prompts (PDF). ANU+ built them for reflections on volunteering; we have reworked them for KNoTs, Projects and the SoCIETIE learning outcomes, and restructured the prompts around Kolb’s cycle in place of the describe–examine–articulate steps ANU+ use.