The use of reflective photography in a large service-learning module

Abstract

The Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology (EBIT) at a university in South Africa presents a compulsory undergraduate course, Community-based Project (code: JCP). It entails students working at least 40 hours in the community and then reflecting on their experiences. The module’s aim is for students to make a beneficial impact on a chosen section of society. It is a large-class service-learning module in which more than 1 600 students are enrolled annually. Therefore, with the JCP lecturer’s approval, each group identifies a project that it will execute in the community. Students have an opportunity to solve a problem collaboratively in a community setting. They then develop self-directed learning habits through practice and reflection to address a specific community need. The research aims to investigate the value of an assignment using the Fotofeedback Method™ in a service-learning module. As a research methodology, the Fotofeedback Method™ is predominantly used in social sciences. By integrating it into a hard science context, it allows students to engage visually in a critical reflection of their learning process. Using the Fotofeedback Method™’s reflective photography approach, students collected data by taking a photograph of a specific challenge they had encountered during the execution of their projects. Afterwards, they reflected on the visually captured problem and how they had resolved it. By means of a questionnaire, students critically reflected on the meaning of their problem-solving experience while viewing the visual material. The questionnaire was firstly validated by 10 groups before requesting ethical clearance. Thereafter, the students in the module were requested to complete the questionnaire and forward a photograph related to the questionnaire to the lecturer. Completion of the survey was voluntary, and 116 (29.07%) of the groups completed the survey and submitted a photograph through their group leaders. The researchers analyzed the students’ feedback on their photographs of the challenges they had encountered to identify themes according to systematic problem-solving and decision-making steps to determine what the students had learnt. The Fotofeedback Method™ is an acknowledged research method and is a highly flexible data-gathering tool. Photography is combined with narrative discourse related to a topic or experience. This process empowers students to experience their preservation of that moment through the photograph as a moment in time and structure their reflective thoughts. In a service-learning module, reflection plays an essential role in the educational process of student learning. The paper will discuss how the Fotofeedback Method™ can be used for critical reflection in the Community-based Project module for undergraduate students in engineering, the built environment and information technology. The study concludes that the Fotofeedback Method™ can be successfully implemented in a large-class service-learning module as an additional reflective assignment. It will give students the opportunity to critically reflect on their learning process visually.