Breda University Case Study: Staying personal with 200 first-year students
“When the entries are in, we feel the connection with our students. It empowers us as lecturers to step in the classroom with the insights of what the student has shared in Rflect with us.”
- Brigitte Castel
How a Creative Business lecturer uses Rflect to build first-year students’ self-awareness, deepen reflection in the age of AI and stay personally connected to a cohort of 200.
Brigitte Castel teaches first-year students in the Creative Business Bachelor at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. She uses Rflect to run weekly reflection assignments for 200 students, and to stay personally connected to each of them.
Reflection has always been part of her programme. What changed was the context. Generative AI made it easy for students to outsource a reflection, and one lecturer cannot follow 200 students closely on her own. Rflect helped her team embed reflection more strongly, make AI part of it, and turn weekly entries into a feedback loop she brings back into class.
Read on for:
- The challenge: building self-awareness, and assessing reflection when AI can write it
- Why Rflect: a stronger structure for an existing practice, with AI as open support
- In the classroom: how weekly entries became a feedback loop by week two
- The impact: efficient but still personal, for lecturers and for students
- Looking ahead: the next blocks and beyond year one
The challenge
Brigitte teaches in Creative Business, part of the university’s Academy for Games and Media. The curriculum is built on project-based and self-regulated learning, and year one is about building self-awareness.
“One important development aspect is self-awareness. That’s key for all students to start off with. It’s basically answering the question: Who am I as a person, but also in a professional environment? Who am I for my peers working together? And who am I when I need to give feedback, or when I get feedback?”
Her course, the programme’s Exploration Path, is the individual track that ties professional development to the group projects.
“We always express it as the glue: our individual track in self-development and professional development. It ties into the project-based learning group projects. So you cannot see it apart from each other.”
Assessing reflection was always hard. Generative AI made it harder.
“If you ask a student, okay, you get credits for your reflection or your self-development report, it’s super easy to bring it to Claude or ChatGPT or whatever, and it will spit out a reflection for them. So how can you really assess the thoughts and the mindset of a student for real?”
Key takeaway: Students need space to build self-awareness, and lecturers need to see it develop. When AI can write a reflection on demand, that gets harder to assess.
Why Rflect
Reflection was not new to the programme. Rflect gave the team a way to embed it more strongly, and to work with AI rather than against it.
“Reflection, reflective writing, reflective thinking, has always been a big part of our education, our program and our curriculum. […] As a tool, Rflect did help us to embed it even stronger and also to move along with AI.”
“We found out about Rflect and we could blend it in very well. And also we could align it with the use of AI for students. So it’s not forbidden, it’s open, it’s there. They can use it to deepen their reflections.”
Instead of banning AI, her team points students to Rflect’s built-in AI support when a reflection stays on the surface.
“There is the opportunity for a student to press that button, ‘Hey, Go Deeper, can you help me?’ and ask deeper questions. […] And if it is an AI support or an AI assistant, why not?”
Key takeaway: Rflect didn’t introduce reflection to the programme. It gave an existing practice a stronger structure, with AI as open support rather than something to police.
In the classroom: a weekly feedback loop
Students complete a weekly reflection assignment in Rflect, connected to the lesson plan. Brigitte works with their entries from the Rflect dashboard.
“With the first entries, you always wait for it a little bit. But then the magic happens. When the entries are in, then you really get the data.”
In the first three weeks of the semester, her routine looked like this:
- Summarise. She summarises entries per class, per group or per student.
- Spot the flags. Rflect flags challenges and positive notes: “not only when the bad things are happening, but also when positive things are happening.”
- Bring it back to class. In week two she shared the week-one highlights with her groups. Time management and procrastination came up as shared challenges.
- Adjust the course. “If there’s need for time management, more insights, then we can fly that in.”
- Reply to individuals. When an entry shows a concern or a moment of joy, she replies personally. Students tell her they appreciate it.
“The strong message that I could give is: listen, you’re not on your own in this. As you can see, we heard this more often. It’s okay, we got you, we will take you by the hand. […] So the whole student well-being is also addressed by that, because they see that they are not alone.” — Brigitte Castel
“When the entries are in, we feel the connection with our students. It empowers us as lecturers to step in the classroom with the insights of what the student has shared in Rflect with us.”
Key takeaway: The value shows once the entries are in. Summaries and flags show where a class is struggling, and bringing that back to students tells them they are being seen and heard by us lecturers.”
The impact: efficient, and still personal
For the lecturer: guidance from a distance
“Rflect gave me an efficiency step to make. And I can guide my students from a distance in my dashboard, but still be personal. I still can find that personal connection and help them and support them in their needs.” — Brigitte Castel
“It helps me to see all my students in different ways: sometimes from the dashboard, sometimes in person, sometimes via a personal meeting, which makes my life as a teacher so much more efficient and focused, because you can focus on the matters of concern or challenges that the student shows in their entries.”
A full circle with the learning outcomes
“We can also perfectly align it in the assessment with the ILOs, the intended learning outcomes. […] So we can really cross-check: okay, this is what we’ve done. How did that land with you? And what did you do with that in your classes or in your group project or with your peers? So it is a full circle.”
For students: being seen
Not every student attends every class. Brigitte sees the personal replies as a way to build presence and connection.
“By being seen and being heard and being acknowledged as being a student, and sometimes with the struggles that there are, we do see them. You can build up a connection. […] It helps also for the students to really see and feel that they are welcomed here.”
Key takeaway: Rflect doesn’t replace personal contact. It shows the lecturer where to spend it, and ties reflection back to the intended learning outcomes.
Looking ahead
Brigitte plans to keep this setup for the remaining three blocks of the year. She is also exploring Rflect for years beyond year one.
“My hope is that with the use of this tool, it can even emphasize stronger the human skills and their development. […] That we bring young professionals to the labour market, to the business and the industry, that are self-aware, are critical, not only on themselves, but also on their environment.” — Brigitte Castel
“My experience with Rflect is very positive. And it really is a great support to work more efficiently in education and stay up to date with the developments. […] It is very user-friendly.”
Key takeaway: Reflection pays off when it is built in: weekly assignments connected to the lesson plan, insights brought back into class, and key users who give the setup the attention it needs.