A cloud-based learning environment for developing student reflection abilities Yen-Ting Lin a , Ming-Lee Wen b , Min Jou a,⇑ , Din-Wu Wu b a Department of Industrial Education, National Taiwan Normal University, 162, He-ping East Road, Section 1, Taipei 10610, Taiwan, ROC b Graduate Institute of Education, Taiwan Shoufu University, 168, Nanshi Li, Madou Dist., Tainan 72153, Taiwan, ROC article info Article history: Keywords: Reflective learning Cloud computing Improving classroom teaching abstract Students learn new knowledge effectively through relevant reflection. Reflection affects how students interact with learning materials. Studies have found that good reflection abilities allow students to attain better learning motivation, comprehension, and performance. Thus, it is important to help students develop and strengthen their reflection abilities as this can enable them to engage learning materials in a meaningful manner. Face-to-face dialectical conversations are often used by instructors to facilitate student reflection. However, such conventional reflection methods are usually only usable in classroom environments, and could not be adopted for distance learning or after class. Cloud computing could be used to solve this issue. Instructor guidance and prompting for initiating reflection could be seamlessly delivered to the students’ digital devices via cloud services. Thus, instructors would be able to facilitate student reflective activities even when outside the classroom. To achieve this objective, this study pro- posed a cloud-based reflective learning environment to assist instructors and students in developing and strengthening reflection ability during and after actual class sessions. An additional experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in an industrial course. Results show that the learning environment developed by this study is able to effectively facilitate student reflec- tion abilities and enhance their learning motivation. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Enhancing student reflection is important for the teaching and learning of new knowledge or skills because reflection affects how instructors and students interact with learning materials they encounter (McNamara, 2004). From instructors’ perspective, stu- dent reflection often influence their best teaching (McNamara, O’Reilly, Best, & Ozuru, 2006). Reflection also influences how instructors plan teaching strategies for new classes in order to en- hance student learning motivation and performance. From the stu- dents’ perspectives, the lack of reflection abilities is a higher risk that new knowledge may be built upon faulty foundations (Boyd & Fales, 1983). Additionally, psychological investigations showed that good reflection abilities would improve learning because memory or mental storage capacity could be developed through association with pre-existing knowledge or experience (Schon, 1987). Studies also indicated that good reflection abilities would enhance student motivation, comprehension, and performance in learning new knowledge or skills (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985; Kemmis, 1985; Paris & Ayres, 1994). Reflection abilities may also be a critical component in the acquisition, processing, and applica- tion of new information within other contexts (Chen, Kinshuk, Wei, & Liu, 2010; Chen, Wei, Wu, & Uden, 2008). The reasons stated above suggest that it is important to develop and strengthen student reflection abilities to help them engage new learning materials in a meaningful manner. To induce student reflection in a classroom setting, instructors usually ask students certain questions to which the students reflect and provide feed- back (Chi, de Leeuw, Chiu, & Lavancher, 1994; Davis, 2000). How- ever, engaging students in face-to-face dialectical conversation in classroom settings is not possible for instructors during remote learning or after school sessions. Cloud computing and services could provide a solution. Prompts and activities helping to induce reflection could be seamlessly delivered to students’ digital de- vices, allowing instructors to facilitate student reflective activities even when outside the classroom. In order to assist instructors in developing student reflection abilities and to help students attain greater learning motivation and performance, a cloud-based reflective learning environment was proposed in this study. An experiment was also conducted in an industrial course in a Taiwanese university to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. 0747-5632/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.12.014 ⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +886 2 77343347; fax: +886 2 23929449. E-mail addresses: ricky014@gmail.com (Y.-T. Lin), sophia.t04008@gmail.com (M.-L. Wen), joum@ntnu.edu.tw (M. Jou), iebill@cc.ntnu.edu.tw (D.-W. Wu). Computers in Human Behavior 32 (2014) 244–252 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Computers in Human Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/comphumbeh