HOW WE TEACH Generalizable Education Research Undergraduate biological sciences and biotechnology students’ reﬂective essays focus on descriptive details of experiential learning experiences

Undergraduate biological sciences and biotechnology students’ reﬂective essays focus on descriptive details of experiential learning experiences. Adv doi:10.1152/advan.00144.2019.—Experien-tial learning experiences (ELEs), opportunities for students to apply knowledge and skills critically in a hands-on environment, are fun-damental to the apprenticeship model of biological and biotechnolog- ical sciences. ELEs enhance student-learning gains, increase career readiness, and provide important networking opportunities. However, students do not often recognize the beneﬁts of ELEs. Reﬂection is a highly effective tool to articulate learning gains and connect new content with established knowledge. Therefore, senior undergraduate students ( n (cid:2) 23), majoring in biological sciences or biotechnology, wrote required reﬂective essays about their ELE, in response to an intentionally vague prompt. Qualitative assessment of the reﬂective essays identiﬁed themes present in the reﬂective essays that typically included descriptions of what students did, with whom they worked, and what they learned during their ELE, but lacked critical analysis or deep reﬂection about their experience. Differences were also present between different types of ELEs. These results provide a foundation for guiding students to deeper reﬂection, ultimately resulting in greater beneﬁts from their ELEs. To promote more robust reﬂection, and, therefore, theoretically enhance learning gains from ELEs, we suggest multiple iterations of reﬂection, instructor feedback and coaching, and ELE-speciﬁc


INTRODUCTION
Many colleges encourage or require their undergraduate students to complete an experiential learning experience (ELE) as part of their curriculum, and these types of learning experiences are commonly considered high impact (16). In addition to promoting student success, the skills learned and developed during these experiences prepare students for careers and/or graduate or professional school (26). Based on the foundational theory of experiential learning (14), the defining aspects of ELEs are learning by doing, learning through real-life contexts, learning through projects, and learning through problem solving (12). ELEs link classroom theory to application in the workplace and professional culture (7,31). Students who complete an ELE report that the opportunity confirmed their career choice and professional goals (7).
ELEs vary among disciplines (13,15). The majority of ELEs conducted in the biological sciences fall into three categories: internship, undergraduate research (field or laboratory based), and independent study. Internships typically place students within organizations and/or a professional environment. Employers benefit from providing students with internships, as these opportunities can serve as an on-ramp for experienced entry-level employees. Students who participate in undergraduate research ELEs perform laboratory and field tasks, analyze data, and communicate their findings, reinforcing the scientific method. For students who pursue an independent study, experiences are tailored to the specific interests and needs of the student. Often, when directly mentored, students benefit from an independent study by developing a close mentoring relationship with faculty members (6,19).
In addition to promoting overarching curricular learning objectives, ELEs provide insight into a profession or topic, allow for hands-on application of content, and enable students to begin to develop a professional network (20). ELEs teach professional attitudes, behaviors, and values (31). Meaningful student-supervisor relationships developed during an ELE can enhance student success and preparation for life after college (4). Students are often encouraged to use content and skills developed in the classroom during an ELE.
With the insight, skills, and support provided by a successful ELE, students might realize the need to rethink their academic and professional trajectories to either better prepare them for the intended career or shift into another field (20). However, students do not often recognize the benefits of the ELE. In addition, expectations and opportunities for students participating in ELEs can vary greatly, depending on supervisors, hosting organizations, and scheduling.
To maximize the benefits of ELEs, students must deliberately reflect on their experience (8,16,20). Some even argue that reflection and analysis, per se, is what provides the meaningful benefits of ELEs (29). Reflection is an intentional metacognitive practice that, if done successfully, connects previous actions with current and future actions, with the intention of improving future outcomes (8). Reflection, either concurrently or after the completion of an ELE, promotes increased critical thinking and deeper learning (29). In addition, reflecting on an ELE strengthens students' career readi-ness by recognizing and honing transferable skills sought in the 21st century marketplace (28). By informing students' academic and professional trajectories, active reflection also develops a narrative of the knowledge and skills that a student has mastered, which could be used while applying for future professional opportunities (18). However, undergraduate students struggle to reflect and articulate reflective thoughts due to a lack of familiarity, instruction, and practice (23). This aligns with difficulties most undergraduate students find with overarching metacognitive processes, despite its essential role in transferability of knowledge in a new setting (22). This leads many to question if undergraduate students can realize the benefits of applying their knowledge in a new situation, such as an ELE, without guided reflective practices (29).
The aim of the current project is to determine, when provided an opportunity to reflect, how biological sciences and biotechnology students, provided minimal instruction and feedback, use reflection to describe and learn from their ELEs. To do this, undergraduate senior biological sciences and biotechnology majors who had completed an ELE were asked to write reflective essays, with an open-ended and unguided prompt, about their learning during the ELE. This assignment was an important and essential part of the class, as reflective observation is one of the four main components of the experiential learning cycle (13). We hypothesized that students would focus on basic descriptions, requirements, and day-today tasks of the ELE and ignore larger, more transformative learning. Through this investigation, we hope to determine what undergraduate students interpret as reflective practices and to provide a framework for promoting productive and meaningful student reflection to optimize the benefits of ELEs.

Senior Seminar and Reflective Essay
Participants (n ϭ 23) were senior undergraduate students enrolled in a one-credit senior seminar course, a graduation requirement for biological sciences and biotechnology majors, during the fall semester of 2015 and 2016 (BSCI 701 Senior Seminar) at a regional public university. An additional requirement for these majors is completion of a four-credit ELE (BSCI 792 Research, BSCI 793 Internship, or BSCI 795 Independent Study). All participants had previously completed or were concurrently completing the required ELE. All participants completed a first-year writing course, a writing-intensive course in the major, and two additional courses designated writing intensive, prior to or concurrently with this course, none of which required reflective writing. Participants, enrolled in the course, wrote reflective essays during the final week of the course. The reflective essays were written in response to the prompt: "Write a 3-5 page reflective essay about your experiential learning experience." So as to not influence student responses, students were not provided with grading criteria, feedback, or a letter grade for the assignment. Students did receive credit for completion of the assignment.
Informed consent was provided by all participants before qualitative analysis of the reflective essays. This protocol was approved by the University of New Hampshire Institutional Review Board (no. 6331).
Reflective essay analysis. An independent reviewer, without knowledge of participant demographics or familiarity with participants or ELE opportunities, assessed the reflective papers. Firstcycle grounded theory analysis (25) of reflective papers resulted in qualitative coding categories, representing themes present in the overall paper cohort. Once the coding categories were established, individual coding for the presence or absence of each category was conducted sequentially.
ELE categories. On completion of the qualitative coding, the ELEs described in the reflective papers were categorized into two groups: 1) biological research in a laboratory or in the field (research, n ϭ 10); and 2) shadowing of one or more healthcare professionals, healthcare vocational course work, and/or healthcare internship (healthcare, n ϭ 13). Research experiences were conducted in a broad range of biological subdisciplines, including, but not limited to, microbiology, neuroscience, conservation, and ecology. Each research student conducted research in a different research environment, with no overlap of research topic or mentoring. All students participating in a healthcare ELE observed and/or worked with numerous healthcare professionals, often in several environments, including, but not limited to, private practice, public hospitals, emergency response, phlebotomy laboratories, and pharmacies. Healthcare students were placed at a wide variety of locations, with minimal overlap of observed healthcare professionals.

Statistical Analysis
Intergroup comparison of the presence or absence of an element of analysis was determined by Pearson's 2 test of independence (JMP, SAS, Cary, NC). Significance difference in frequency of an element was determined by P Ͻ 0.05.

Reflective Essay Analysis
Grounded theory analysis resulted in the emergence of eight coding categories (Table 1). These categories represent topics discussed by the participants, as observed and reported by the independent reviewer of the papers. Aligning with practices of grounded theory, these topics are reported de novo after the review of the papers by the independent reviewer, rather than by coding with preconceived rubrics or concepts (25). The eight topics, and respective subtopics, are reported in greatest to least mention in participant papers.
Topic 1: ELE description. Almost all participants (22/23 essays where topic was identified/total number of essays, 96% of total where topic was identified) provided a description of the general functions performed during their ELE. This description included some or all of tasks completed by the student or the team to which the student belonged and/or the tasks observed. Most participants indicated the tasks or function of the internship was new or unfamiliar (17/22, 77%), whereas the remaining indicated at least some familiarity with the tasks performed or observed (5/22, 23%). Students describing research ELEs were much more likely than those describing healthcare ELEs (research vs. healthcare, 8/9 vs. 6/13; 1 2 ϭ 4.12, P ϭ 0.042) to provide an explanation of the larger impact or context of their position relative to the profession, discipline, community, and/or world.
Topic 2: Satisfaction with ELE. Nearly all participants (22/ 23, 96%) indicated that they completed the ELE with a sense of satisfaction. One participant did not mention or indicate either satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the experience.
Topic 3: Interactions with people. Most of the participants (22/23, 96%) made specific reference to names and/or positions of coworkers, which could include supervisor or mentor. However, there was a substantial difference between the two ELE groups when participants described other stakeholders, including anyone else who may be impacted by their work in the ELE. Of those who wrote about other people, participants in research ELEs were much less likely to discuss other stakeholders than participants in healthcare ELEs (4/9 vs. 13/13; 1 2 ϭ 9.35, P ϭ 0.002). Topic 4: Learning during ELE. Almost all of the participants (22/23, 96%) wrote specifically about new information or content they learned during their ELE, but only one-half (11/22, 50%) referred to where they might use this information again. Some participants (15/23, 65%; research vs. healthcare, 7/10 vs. 8/13) described specific transferable skills (i.e., writing, communication, excluding laboratory and/or medical techniques). All of the research ELE participants who described specific skills made explicit reference to how they would use these transferable skills again, but few healthcare ELE participants did the same (research vs. healthcare, 7/7 vs. 3/8; 1 2 ϭ 6.56, P ϭ 0.010). Topic 5: ELE goals. Most participants (18/23, 78%) made explicit mention of professional goals for their ELE. All of these participants (18/18, 100%) discussed how their ELE was related to their professional goals. Very few participants (7/23, 30%) made any mention of goals for personal growth.
Topic 6: Challenges During ELE. Many participants (15/23, 65%) wrote about the challenges or difficulties they encountered during their ELE. Most of these responses (8/15, 53%) were exclusively about professional challenges or difficulties of the position, with only one-half of these responses (4/8, 50%) including information about how these challenges were resolved. Of the very few who wrote exclusively about personal challenges (3/15, 20%), only one discussed how they addressed or resolved these personal challenges (1/3, 15%). Participants who wrote about both professional and personal challenges they encountered (4/15, 27%) during the ELE provided an explanation of how these challenges were addressed or resolved.
Topic 7: Preparation for ELE. Very few participants (10/23, 43%) discussed how prior course work or experiences prepared them for this internship experience. Of those who discussed how they used what they had previously learned, all referred to content knowledge (10/10, 100%), whereas only one mentioned transferable skill (1/10, 10%).
Topic 8: Surprises during ELE. Only a small number of participants (7/23, 30%) made specific mention of unexpected or surprising situations, feelings, or realizations. Almost all of these participants (6/7, 86%) indicated in the ELE description that the tasks during the ELE were unfamiliar and/or new to them.

DISCUSSION
Experiential learning can be transformative to the professional and personal trajectory of student learners (13,16,17). Given the many benefits, many undergraduate institutions require students to participate in ELEs, often devoting substantial resources to provide effective and valuable opportunities for students. To optimize the benefits of ELEs, students must successfully reflect on their experiences, linking prior knowledge and experiences to the novel situation presented in the ELE (11,13,17,30). However, left to their own devices, there is substantial evidence that undergraduate students lack the ability to reflect in a meaningful and productive way (18,23,30). Since metacognition is a critical component to becoming Very few participants mentioned unforeseen issues, with those who did more likely to be performing tasks new to them.
ELE, experiential learning experiences. *Strong prevalence occurred in 96% of papers; moderate prevalence occurred in 75-78% of papers; weak prevalence occurred in Յ43% of papers. a successful scientist (1,29), it is important to understand how undergraduate biological sciences and biotechnology students use reflection and, therefore, where we as educators can guide further growth.
In the present study, undergraduate biological science and biotechnology majors wrote reflective essays in response to their ELE, as a requirement for a senior capstone course. Students made their own decisions about what was important to their reflection, as the prompt for the reflective essay was intentionally vague. As a result, the essays typically included descriptions of what students did, with whom they worked, and what they learned during their ELE (Table 1). They were also very likely to indicate that they were satisfied overall with their ELE, focusing on the positive aspects of the experience, including content they had learned.
There is a substantial gap in the literature about the theoretical structure of reflection for the learning process (8). However, the presence of content-driven descriptions of ELEs in the reflective essays aligns with long-established descriptions of a basic, novice level of reflection (10,11,17). This level of reflection provides a useful perspective for students' professional and personal growth. However, a truly transformational form of reflection, focused on the role of the ELE in a student's learning trajectory, is largely missing from the reflective essays (11).
In this present study, the novice level of reflections was appropriate for the experience and developmental stage of their learning. Learning new skills requires multiple iterations and enhanced benefits of ELEs become apparent with numerous new experiences, each followed by opportunities to reflect (13). In addition, effective learning by students in an ELE requires proper facilitation of the reflection by the instructor (30). In particular, formative assessment and feedback increase student performance in biology courses and writing assignments (5,21). In the present study, students were only required to participate in one ELE, they had limited instructor guidance, and no feedback or opportunity to refine their reflective essays. It is not surprising that they presented a basic level of reflection. However, the important finding presented here is what students focused on when left unguided. This information provides a foundation for understanding how to guide students to deeper understanding and reflection, ultimately resulting in greater benefits from their ELEs.
If students were to gain the greatest learning benefits from their ELEs, what would we like to observe in their reflections? For larger gains, students must be able to recognize what they have learned, how they have changed, and place those observations in a larger context (11). Critical reflection, examining the larger narrative of impact, is linked to more complex metacognition and more successful learning (8).
The ability of students to document what they did and the content they learned is important, but guiding students to think about how they changed during the ELE experience is critical for greater learning gains (23). While 96% of participants described content or basic procedures that they learned during their ELE, only 65% described transferable skills, such as communication, writing, and laboratory/field techniques. When transferable skills were noted, it was often just in passing, with a greater emphasis on techniques, and very little mention of social and critical thinking skills. Similarly, many students (78%) discussed professional goals in their ELE reflective essays, but very few (30%) mentioned personal goals. Therefore, students readily recognized ELEs as a means to achieve their professional goals, but showed very little evidence of recognizing how they were changed by the experience.
Another prevalent finding in the present study was the overwhelming expression of satisfaction with the ELE. All of the students (96%) who wrote about how they felt about the ELE overall expressed strong satisfaction with the experience. In addition, only 65% of students wrote about any type of challenge they encountered, with very little mention of personal challenges or how the challenges were resolved. An even small number of students (30%) wrote about surprises they encountered during the ELE. It is possible the vast majority of students had an excellent experience or were appreciative to have such an experience. However, many of the students were experiencing a novel environment, and, therefore, it is more likely students did experience substantial challenges and surprises, but chose an audience-appeasing narrative of satisfaction (3).

Future Directions
To promote a deeper, more robust, reflection and, therefore, theoretically enhance learning gains from ELEs, we suggest multiple iterations of reflection, followed by instructor feedback and coaching (9,28). Feedback from the instructor should encourage students to evaluate their values, needs, wants, interests, strengths, weaknesses, and skills (2,9).
While students are successful at describing their ELE environment and tasks, students should be encouraged and prompted to write explicitly about: 1. Their preparation for their ELE 2. The use of previously acquired skills and knowledge during their ELE, with specific reference to critical thinking, communication, and analytical skills 3. Their personal and professional development during their ELE 4. The role of the ELE in their personal and professional trajectory Students engaged in research ELEs were much more likely to discuss the broader impacts of their work, whereas those who wrote about healthcare ELEs focused more on other people (specifically non-coworkers, typically patients) with whom they had daily interaction. It is possible students selfselect into research and healthcare ELEs based on their interests and scope of how their work affects others. However, it is also possible that the professions represented by these experiences focus systematically with these perspectives. Despite the cause of these differences, these findings support the need for ELE-specific prompts (8). Providing students with a set of learning objectives associated with the specific type of ELE (internship, research, or independent study), addressing weaknesses described here, would likely promote thoughtful reflection. These objectives should frame the expectations of the ELE, provide guidance for the students to think more deeply about what they will be learning, and ask students to clearly articulate what is relevant for their own success (9,32). Our current findings and suggestions are specific to written reflection. As student writing is typically highly variable, other forms of metacognitive reflective practice, such as video essay or audio recordings, warrant further investigation.
Undergraduate students are ever-increasingly goal orientated, skill focused, and interested in career readiness (27). Often, students consider ELEs mechanisms to become careerready graduates (24,27). However, educators must guide students to recognize the skills and perspectives gained during these experiences for students to apply these gains in the future successfully.