Low-Stakes Handwritten Reflection Journals

Professor Madeleine Mant’s teaching brings her research on health inequities in marginalized populations through bioarchaeology, medical history, and medical anthropology into conversation with contemporary public health challenges to develop students’ scientific literacy. Her courses discuss the effects of health and illness on bodies through time, encouraging students to be ethically engaged citizens and critical thinkers. In her classes, students investigate the social, political, and cultural meanings of bodies, and what forms of evidence (e.g., human skeletons, archival medical documents, popular culture) might be used to uncover and understand these meanings.

Madeleine Mant Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, UTM

Objectives

As part of the second-year course, ANT220 (Introduction to the Anthropology of Health), this activity aimed to develop students’ capacity for ongoing critical reflection on course concepts while creating an AI-resistant, low-stakes writing practice that builds analytical endurance.

By requiring handwritten responses to reflective questions at the end of each lecture, the assignment encourages consistent engagement with material, monitors student understanding throughout the semester, and provides regular opportunities for students to connect anthropological concepts to personal experience and contemporary healthcare contexts. The flexible structure – multiple opportunities with only five required for credit -removes penalty for occasional absences while still incentivizing attendance and sustained participation.

Process

The activity was designed as a structured, in-class reflective writing practice spanning the full semester. The steps included:

Step 1: Weekly In-Class Journaling Prompts

At the end of nine lectures throughout the semester, students receive a reflective question connecting to that day’s material
Example prompts include: What do you hope to learn about the anthropology of health? What echoes of medical history can you still see in medicine today? How might a patient’s culture affect their experience in a doctor’s office? What does “community care” mean to you? How does stress “get under the skin”?
Students write handwritten responses in physical journals provided by the instructor during dedicated in-class time

Step 2: Submission and Instructor Feedback

Students submit journal entries at end of class
Instructor reads all entries and provides brief written comments
Feedback helps monitor student understanding and engagement throughout semester

Step 3: Flexible Completion Requirements

Students complete at least five of nine possible entries
Each complete response worth 1% (total 5% of final grade)
Students choose which five to submit based on interest, attendance, or preparedness
No makeup opportunities, but built-in flexibility accommodates absences

Future-Focused Skill Development

This activity supports future-ready learning by aligning with principles from the University of Calgary’s STRIVE model. First, it supports Student-Centered Learning by giving students choice in which five of nine prompts to complete, allowing them to engage most deeply with topics that resonate with their interests or experiences.

It also promotes Validity by ensuring authentic assessment through in-class handwritten responses that cannot be AI-generated, requiring students to demonstrate genuine understanding and personal reflection in real-time. Finally, it emphasizes Integrity by creating assessment conditions where AI use is structurally impossible, teaching students that meaningful learning sometimes requires slowing down rather than outsourcing reflection to technology.

Student Feedback

Professor Mant shares: Students like to express themselves, but students don’t like writing under pressure. Writing assignments are critical aspects of university education; however, if every time students must write there is a large chunk of their grade on the line, the joy of creation can be stifled. Incorporating these low stakes reflection journals for the past two years as a stepping-stone to longer in-class assignments has been fruitful. This assignment builds analytical endurance and literal holding-a-pen-to-write endurance, which is necessary for longer test situations. I found that even when students had completed the five required entries, those in attendance continued to journal for the last 5-10 minutes of class anyway, which allowed me to take unofficial attendance. This indirectly allowed me a sense of who was attending regularly, so I could check in with students who missed two weeks in a row, something that can be difficult in larger courses.

From the Fall 2025 student evaluations: “As for the assignments, it was an amazing way to eliminate any use of AI and allow students to just write out whatever comes to mind, which also is a great learning experience for students to flow with their writing.”

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