The bottom line is that gathering information from text is a central requirement throughout one's educational experience. Therefore we must provide students with guidance and structure so that later they may provide themselves the structure and therefore gain the intended information from their readings. I ask them to explain cartographic modeling, on paper, as if explaining it to a manager at the company who is unfamiliar with GIS and cartographic modeling. After they read, write, and explain on paper, we discuss their ideas. This reflecting period allows students to sort through the information, put it in perspective in their minds with regard to existing information, to think of linkages with other existing information, to construct new, related thoughts or questions, and to allow ideas to mature.
Journals are an excellent method for incorporating reflecting into the curriculum.
Some adherents to journaling reserve class time for writing while others ask students to reflect at home or later in the day. The journal may include information such as what was covered in class today, what did they learn, and how did they feel at the end of class. One problem with my experiment is that I did not require students to write before they left class. By the time they leave my class and go through two or three more classes, they really don't remember enough to allow the Learning Log to help them. In addition, I still feel that if I make a required assignment, I must grade it, which was hard to do in this case and very time consuming.