Journal Guidelines

OVERVIEW
Journal writing is well recognized as a valuable technique in almost all scholarly endeavors. Within the context of a university course, the purpose of journal writing is to give us an opportunity to contemplate ideas discussed during class and reflect on what we have learned. It is intended to promote synthesizing and internalizing the course concepts by helping us identify the essential ideas, make connections between ideas, and finding relevance to other courses, our major, or our university education in general. The discipline of writing forces us to make explicit our process of struggling to understand new ideas, and assists us in clarifying and refining what we think we know. The journal also serves as a record of how our perceptions, beliefs, and attitudes evolve over time.

DIRECTIONS

1. Journal entries must be recorded in a bound composition book.
2. Personal entries are to be written at least three times per week for at least 30 minutes.
3. Entries must be dated and recorded sequentially in the journal with no skipped pages.
4. Entries should be legible and coherent. Write in ink. It is acceptable to cross things out if necessary but don't erase or whiteout anything.
5. Entries must follow standards of good writing to the extent that the writing must be comprehensible. Journal entries are NOT expected to be polished writing, so occasional lapses in grammar or spelling are allowed as long as they are not severe enough to interfere with comprehension.
6. Journals will be submitted for assessment three times during the quarter: at the end of the third, sixth, and tenth weeks. It is the student's responsibility to submit their journal during class on the due date.

GUIDELINES
A journal is not simply a diary. A diary is a chronological account of events. A journal is an attempt to understand the significance of events and their implications for us.

In a journal entry, you write your reactions and reflections to some "trigger" event. Trigger events can be things you read, ideas raised during class discussion, questions raised by lab activities or in conversation with other students, current events from newspapers or magazines, and so on. You may reflect on an idea, principle, or issue that you find provocative, hard to believe, confusing or related to something else you have read or experienced.

In your entry, briefly review the content, idea, issue, or event you are reacting to, but go beyond an impersonal description of it. Comment on the significance of the event, and explain what meaning it has for you. You may discuss how relevant the idea is for you academically, professionally, or personally. Demonstrate that you have thought about the issue in some way that is not superficial, hopefully by relating it to class concepts. Then consider the implications of what you have discussed, speculate on how the meanings or insights you've gained can be used for improvement or growth.

CRITERIA
The following is designed to present evaluation guidelines to journal authors and evaluators. Keep this guide in mind as you both prepare and evaluate the journals required for our class. Remember, to be of value any journal must be based on extensive thought and preparation that goes beyond mere description and provides an analysis or discussion of the usefulness, importance, significance, relevance, meaning, etc. of the topics being explored.

As you write an evaluate journals you should ask, "how well are the following criteria being achieved?" These are suggestive rather than exhaustive guidelines for preparing a valid and high quality journal to meet course expectations.

1. Description / Observation
   This component assesses how clearly and concisely the author discussed the event, behavior, etc. which served as the "trigger" for writing the journal entry. It has sufficient but not an overwhelming amount of detail.
2. Connections
   This component assesses how well the author did in showing that some class related concept, principle, issue, etc. pertains to the trigger event noted above. It assesses how well the author was able to show in clear, concise, logical, and accurate way that the topic or issue under study does in fact explain, exemplify, control, predict, or provide insight into the events which happened in #1 above. This facet does not simply restate the topic or idea but rather goes beyond to show how and why the topic is related to the trigger event.
3. Insight
   This component answers the critical question "so what?" That is, it addresses the meaning and implication of the connections made above. It answers the question "what have I learned, and why is it useful to have this knowledge?" Ideally the discussion of insights gained should lead to thoughts about how we might think or behave differently in the future. How have we been affected by what we've learned and what does that imply for the future.
4. Authenticity of Involvement
   The journal entry should communicate in some way that it is the result of a real person genuinely engaged in a learning process. It should not sound formulaic, artificial, or contrived just to fulfill a requirement. It should convince the reader that the author really believed what they were writing.

Last updated 9/23/97