Learning Journal

Over the summer semester I teach a research and writing class for graduate students preparing for their final thesis.  In this course the students are reintroduced to scholarly writing, research, and the APA formatting guidelines.  The final deliverable for this course is a project proposal for their thesis.

About halfway through the course the students spend about four weeks researching their topics and writing an annotated bibliography of their sources.  This exercise is assigned to help the students place their research in the context of their thesis project and to encourage them to conduct a majority of their literature research in the preparation of their proposal.

Over the past few years I noticed many students were putting off the research until the end of the four weeks.  This resulted in a hastily constructed collection of unrelated sources that were intended to satisfy the need for the bibliography assignment more than the development of their research proposal.  This year I wanted to incentivize the students to begin the research earlier in the class and to report their progress during the four-week window of research.

I am looking to ask the students to contribute to their own learning journal throughout the class where the students are each required to reflect on their findings from the literature and their progress toward the project proposal.  My hope is this journal will make their progress more transparent to the student and myself and to keep the students focused on the development of the proposal.  Hopefully, I can implement this journal assignment in a manner that provides value to the student while allowing me to better understand their progress, concerns, and new discoveries.