Teaching Tips: Ideas for Teaching with Journals
- Journals are useful for periodic reflective writing, for drafts, or for collecting resources for a research project. A student can refine their work over a period of time, using an instructor’s guidance and suggestions. Students can also comment on their own entries to continue the conversation.
- Have each student write a one paragraph response to a homework reading. You will be able to review it, then post comments in their Journal. These postings will be private between you and the student.
- Have students post discussion questions for the next class meeting. This will alert you to what is uppermost in their minds about the topic, and will help them focus.
- Have students do a pre-class summary/question quick write. That is, they post a one sentence summary of the topic covered in the last class and one question related to that topic.
- Like the Assignment tool, Journals can be used by students to attach documents or PowerPoint slides, or to link to external web sites.
- If students are working on a research project, have them use a Journal to record their progress. They can post resources, questions they are developing or answering, amount of writing done, drafts, etc.