Using journals and learning blogs to assess learning
Gibbs argues ‘it is not sufficient to have an experience in order to learn. Without reflecting on this experience it may quickly be forgotten, or its learning potential lost.’
Gibbs extended this thinking by creating a reflective learning cycle which is widely used across multiple disciplines:
Note the essential components of: feelings [how it felt], evaluation [the good and the bad], analysis [what it meant] and action planning [for the future].
Schon promoted the idea of reflecting before, during and after in order to maximise the gain from any learning experience or situation, and coined terms that have endured:
Reflection before action: predicting outcomes, seeing challenges, preparing for the experience.
- Is this what I expected?
- Can I make this more successful?
- What am I learning?
Reflection on action: how did it go?
- What was good?
- How could I have done things differently?
- What have I learned?
To make this ‘head-based’ process available to assessors we need to ask our learners to write it down and share it with us in some way: journals, diaries, logs or blogs.
Journal: requires you to write weekly entries throughout a semester.
May require you to base your reflection on course content.
Learning diary: similar to a journal, but may require group participation.
The diary then becomes a place for you to communicate in writing with other group members.
Log book: often used in disciplines based on experimental work, such as science.
You note down or 'log' what you have done.
A log gives you an accurate record of a process and helps you reflect on past actions and make better decisions for future actions.
Blog: a blog is an online log (web log) - you write short pieces ('posts'), and then post them online, usually in a restricted area in Moodle where peers can read them and possibly respond to them.
Some make the distinction of in or after the event: logs are records of what the learner is doing at the time; Schon’s reflection in action.
Whilst learning journals are more then Schon’s reflection on action [personal experience, reactions - hence after - and reflections].
Whether log, journal or diary the important components are feelings, evaluation, analysis and forward-planning that is linked to the concepts / knowledge /skills that students are learning as part of the course, so that it is grounded in the discipline.
A reflective journal is an account of your work in progress, but more essentially an opportunity for reflection on the learning experience. It should provide you with a means of engaging critically and analytically with module content.
Reflection and recording thinking will, of course, help learners to become more responsible for their own development as autonomous and independent learners.
We can consider the following ‘levels’ of reflective writing:
- Descriptive reflection: the writer explains an event in relation to their personal belief, or possibly in relation to an identified authority.
They might identify more than one point of view although little attempt is made to distinguish a superior approach based on underlying principles.
- Dialogic reflection: the writer analyses and explains events in relation to their own views of the observations.
They place the implications of the event in a wider context and explore these in relation to possible changes in their own practice.
There is a discourse with self and the literature, exploring experiences, events, and actions using possible alternatives for explaining and hypothesising.
- Critical reflection: critical analysis of personal experiences, contextualised and informed by theory.
An event is viewed from multiple perspectives, the evidence is analysed critically and either a choice or judgment is made between actions, or, what has been discovered is integrated into a better understanding of the issue.
The writer clearly demonstrates the impact of the experience on their personal development and the resulting change in their own practice.