Journaling is a private record of students' thoughts that provides a safe way to communicate with the instructor, thus becoming a window that allows instructors to look into how students are thinking about what they are learning. Student diaries can be an important source of information about learning difficulties, misunderstandings, strengths and weaknesses and metacognition. The effort to organize thoughts, ideas and feelings to be coherently communicated through written words, video, audio, or any other media also gives students opportunities to examine their own thought processes.
Journaling can be conducted as a private conversation that students have with themselves and that they open to the instructor or their peers. A journaling assignment can take different approaches. Double-entry journals, in which students both highlight selected parts of assigned reference materials and record their responses to these ideas help students identify and discuss key concepts to their object of study. Reflective journals help students develop metacognitive skills, reflecting on what they have learned and how they have learned. Dialogical journals can be used simultaneously by a pair of students to discuss the content they are learning, while learning records can help students keep a record of their learning, clarifying their thinking and learning.
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Learning outcomes
Students will be able to:
- Reflect on their learning evolution, express feelings, and structure focused arguments
- Consolidate subject related understanding
- Exercise multimedia creation
- Communicate effectively and creatively
Instructions to students
Overview
Keeping an electronic journal using the media of your choice (audio, video, texts, images, or a combination of these) will be an important part of your learning experience. By engaging you in structuring your thoughts about what you are doing and what you are learning, journaling can potentialize your learning experience. It can also make you aware of what you don’t know, so that you can direct your efforts towards finding out more.
Instructions
Create a blog, vlog, photolog, or audiolog using the tool of your choice, and post one or more entries every week. You may choose between writing a short text (100 words) or making a short audio or video (3 minutes). You may also use alternative media, such as sequential art (i.e. comics) or photography, If you plan to use alternative media, please talk to the instructor to discuss the deliverables. Post at least one entry the day after our class, to facilitate making an accurate entry. Journals will be collected on the dates indicated on the Course Outline. Each journal entry should include all of the following elements.
- Objectively describe your experience
- What happened?
- Make a factual account of the behaviors, evidence, events you observed that does not include your opinion.
- Interpret and explain
- Try to understand the points you described above. Use principles and concepts from the course reading material and lectures in your interpretations.
- Reflect on your learning process
- Thoughts/opinions. What does it mean to you?
- Feelings. Use emotion words (i.e., happy, surprised, frustrated) to describe your feelings.
- What knowledge and/or skills did you acquire today?
- What did you learn about yourself?
- What did you learn about others around you?
Grading
The following criteria will be used to evaluate your journal and allocate points:
- Entries respond to all three items listed for the journal above.
- Objective Description and Interpretation/ Explanation are clearly distinguished from each other.
- Clear connections to course principles and concepts are made.
Rubric for evaluating student blogs (University of Wisconsin – Stout)
Video blog (vlog) rubric from UCF
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