Developing Students’ Reflective Skills to Improve the Learning of Human-Computer Interaction

The field of Human-computer interaction (HCI) has emerged as a multidisciplinary field. Students are required to learn theoretical design concepts and implement them in practice. This creates difficulties in learning HCI because students are not able to apply what they have learned. Reflective practice has proven to be advantageous in helping students critically reflect on their actions. The reflective practice concept can provide students with a chance to examine what was done and recommend improvements to their actions. This study was conducted as a case study of information technology students at the South African University of Technology. Data were collected from 66 students who underwent HCI as part of their curriculum. After the completion of an assignment, students completed reflective sheets, and content analysis was performed on the qualitative data. The findings indicate that it is essential to understand the question to apply relevant theoretical concepts to practical situations. This paper presents students’ perspectives on how to improve HCI learning by developing their reflective skills. The active involvement of students in enhancing their HCI learning experiences and the benefits of reflective practice in this regard are highlighted in our presentation, and we illustrate that such an approach leads to improved HCI learning outcomes.