Promoting reflection with WATCHiT apps

Abstract

Reflection on work is important to promote continuous learning and help workers learn from previous experiences and improve the next time. It is not enough just to experience something, we have to reflect on the experience to learn from it. Reflection can either be personal or collaborative.WATCHiT is a wearable device used for collecting data during work without interrupting the user.In this thesis the goal was to develop a specialized application that would help to promote collaborative reflection using data collected from WATCHiT. This can be useful in situations where workers have little or no time to reflect during or after work, e.g. for emergency workers working during an emergency situation. Applications were designed, implemented and evaluated during the course of the thesis. This followed after requirements had been elicited through the use of scenarios and a model for designing applications to support reflective learning. During the course of the thesis several prototypes where created and iteratively improved. The work resulted in a suite of WATCHiT applications with a common entry point that communicates directly with WATCHiT to collect data, shares this data between users and presents it to support collaborative reflection. The applications were evaluated at a big emergency simulation event and showed potential for promoting reflection among emergency workers.