The Positive Effects of using Reflective Prompts in a Database Course

Motivation: Prior literature has identified student reflections as a way to encourage students to express their thoughts in a structured and focused manner. Objectives: Our goal is to examine the impact of reflections in a third year database systems course, which employs an active learning approach and classroom environment. Specifically, we are interested in seeing whether reflecting on key concepts covered in a preparatory component before lecture had an impact on student’s immediate and long-term performance. Methods: Students were divided into two groups, and asked to reflect on different topics after watching lecture videos before completing their homework exercises for 3 weeks. Results: We observed that students who reflected on lecture concepts performed better on homework exercises that covered those same concepts than students who did not reflect on those same concepts. Moreover, students who reflected performed better in subsequent assessments than students who did not reflect at all. Implications: Reflection as a part of the preparatory component in flipped classrooms is a useful component in conceptual understanding. Further research and investigation should be pursued into ways of prompting reflection, and assessing this component in database courses.