What is an online learning Journal Assignment? 

Here is a brief outline followed by a more detailed discussion. 

Each week students choose three ideas, 2 from the online course readings, and 1 from the text. They are required to answer four questions for each idea:

1) What was the one idea that struck you and why?

2) How does it connect to what you are learning about in class?

3) How did it expand your understanding?

4) What would you like to learn more about?

These entries are assembled in a multi-media portfolio every three to four weeks for the first 10 weeks of the semester. Students are free to reflect on lived experience with issues ranging from racism to the impact of other political events, and political action, among other topics. Those are then related to what is being learned in class. The semester concludes with more traditional assignments focused on reasoning and critical thinking. 

Rationale

Traditional assignments are about measuring accumulated knowledge and skills and can create anxiety for students when learning a new topic. "Will this be on a test or quiz? Do I have to remember it?" The traditional approach has some value, but it also takes away our natural curiosity as life-long learners.

A learning portfolio assignment is about learning, discovering, and reflecting on how new knowledge expands understanding. As used in my online introduction to the American Political System Class since 2020, it became a diary about what students were learning during the first half of the semester. In this format students new to politics and political science or a political science major had the opportunity to do well and discover new insights. 

Strengths and areas for improvement for learning journal assignments

The assignments have increased student enthusiasm and engagement in the course. This is shown in the depth of the writing and in the creativity in the use of other formats including videos, photos, and PowerPoints. They are also free to include their own art, poetry, or other forms of expression if they can be clearly related to the course themes. The journals also fit well with the fast-breaking, seismic events of the last few years: a national reckoning on race, a pandemic, and the threat of rising authoritarianism in the US. In short, It provides a way for students to process history-in-the-making.  Knowledge of power, politics and the American political system is essential to that process. For years it took substantial effort to demonstrate to many apathetic students that politics was relevant to their lives. That has not been the case in recent times. I also believe these many teachable moments required an adaptable format both for students and myself as an instructor. 

Three other things were important here. First, they connected to what most interested them, and second, it’s an assignment that can meet the needs of learners new to the discipline as well as those more advanced either by exposure to other courses or by being already interested in and following politics.  Third, the assignments allow for more constructive individualized feedback by instructors. 

New students can demonstrate an understanding of basic terms and concepts (the initial level from Bloom’s taxonomy) and more advanced students (who sometimes delay intro course requirements until graduation is near) are free to go above and beyond intro course expectations and include more advanced levels from Bloom’s taxonomy and more advanced topics. 

The question “what would you like to learn more about?” allows instructors to offer tips for further exploration and additional readings and sources. It also offers a way to assess students' particular interests, and understanding of the course material and to assess where additions or revisions in the course lessons might be required. 

The flexibility of formats for the assignment allowed students to follow their creative passions (see my blog post on “maker assignments”). One media studies major made a narrated video that was illustrated with near-professional newscast level photos, video clips, and graphics.

As noted above, students were free to connect course learnings to their lived experiences such as racism or sexism. Devaluing lived experience as a permissible topic for academic work has been cited by critical race theorists as a deficiency in traditional higher education. 

The assignment also creates many openings for constructive grading feedback.  Because the entries stress the students’ individual process of learning it allows for more precision with the ability to address grading comments specifically to student interests,  insights, or any misunderstandings of course material. In that way, it allows for more holistic feedback than in traditional and narrowly focused assignments such as quizzes. The second question especially shows whether they are grasping at single ideas or able to relate the idea to the course or topic module as a whole. 

Learning journal grading is more labor-intensive for instructors. 

Areas for improvement 

My biggest concern was that students might use the relative freedom of the learning journal to gather random musings disconnected from the major course themes and learning objectives. Except for a few cases, largely resulting from avoiding essential parts of the assignment prompt, that did not occur. The key is requiring students to connect their takeaways and learnings to the course themes or section themes. Success with this question was intermittent in Fall 2020. Subsequent iterations of the learning journal assignments in 2021-22 featured explicit guidance for making connections to course themes and comparisons across topics and I have seen much improvement. As with any portfolio-style assignment, some students clearly wait until the last minute and/or short the minimum number of required reflections. 

Going forward I’ll gather data to assess the effectiveness of each part of the assignment in meeting course learning goals.