Journals are more than personal diaries. They are tools for learning and communicating in many fields of study. A humanist may use a journal to reflect on ideas for projects and to jot down sources of information; a scientist or social scientist might keep a research log or a field notebook to detail research procedures, observations, and reflections; artists sometimes use an artist's notebook to collect thoughts, musings, sketches, and reflections in the process of creation. Similarly, professional fields keep journals to log, store, and reflect upon information; in addition, such documents can be an important form of accessibility. Whether they take the form of field notebooks or office or laboratory logs, journals can promote learning and help students practice professional reflection, data storage, information flow, and professional accountability.

In School--For Learning

In school sometimes the only experience students have with journal writing is personal diary keeping. This personal reflection type of journal keeping has a tremendous potential. While teachers can use this sort of free journal (in which students write about anything they want to, with entries a certain length and frequency), two other kinds can help students to think about the subject matter:

 

Focused journals: Students keep notebooks containing specific assignments. For example, they could do lab write-ups; record relevant current events; answer study questions (from a text or teacher handout); record difficulties they experience with the class material and how they overcome those difficulties.

Double-entry journals (Carnegie Ledger): Students keep notes from readings and lectures on one page of their notebooks and, on the facing page, respond to and analyze those notes. If you have students who can't distinguish between facts and application or analysis, the double-entry journal can help them recognize the difference.  Just by looking at the pages, the student can tell if she is focused heavily on facts (left side full with little on the right), heavily on interpretation while skirting facts (right side full with little on the left), or if she has balanced the two.

Here are some examples of uses:

1. Ask students to write the facts of the reading or lecture or observation on the left side of an open notebook. The writing may be a jot listing, a summary or a paraphrase, depending on your preferences and the subject matter.
   

2. Ask students to use the right-side page to react to what they have on the left page. Again, depending on the subject matter and preferences, here are some ways the right side can be used:

	to compare what has been written to previous classwork
	to apply the left-side information to a real world situation
	to list questions that the information prompts

For the Work World

Teachers who are interested in helping students to acculturate to a professional field may want to incorporate an assignment that gives students a chance to manage a journal the way they would professionally. In the real world, information in a journal, log, or notebook is often a means to a larger end. Notes in a journal kept by a person in the humanities might prompt a paper, poem, or play. A research log or field notebook is likely to be used in a research write up. And, besides serving as a resource for the artist's work, an artist's notebook provides those crucial words that are used in the artists statements to give verbal articulation to the visual.

The journal in a professional class will 

	permit responding to and reacting as well as collecting information
	be a means of posing and pondering questions and issues
	offer opportunities to think visually as well as verbally.

Journals can be used to shape an entire course. However, teachers will want to insert interim deadlines to help students manage the task.

For the Instructor

Besides the broad-ranging use of journals across the disciplines and professional programs, journal keeping is also a practical teaching management tool.

	It offers a continuity in course assignments.
	You can organize your entire course around it.
	It gives you unparalleled flexibility in assignments and evaluation.

Teaching Notes:

For you to get full benefit from the journal-writing, think about these points before assigning the journal:

1. What do you want the journal to be for your class? A record of responses to readings? A collection place for all class writings? Both?
2. What is the format of the journal? Single entry or double-entry (typically, facts on the left and interpretation or reaction on the right)? Informal jottings? A log? Formal short papers collected together with an introduction?
3. What is the pay off for the students? How will the work they put into the journal benefit them in terms of the larger class goals? Will the journal help them write a paper or pass an exam?
4. How do you want to incorporate the journal into class time? Journals might become a beginning of class ritual for students while the teacher is taking role. (On the other hand, it is always better if the teacher is writing in class with the students.) Or, journals can be a closing ritual.
5. When will you read and grade the entries?  Gear your reading and grading of journal entries to your overall objectives. 

Certainly you will want to read SOME of the entries: besides learning what the students know, you will get a clear indication of their misconceptions. (In the case of double-entry journals, right-hand entries, especially, give a sense of their attitudes and how well they are connecting what they have read.) But remember:  not all that is written needs to be graded. 

Requiring a table of contents and a page-numbering system allows you to spot check entries, assigning a quantity mark to them. Many successful journal users set up a rotating schedule so that both they and their students know exactly how many they will read a week.

6. What appearance do you want the journal to take?  Will your students bring the journal daily? How often do you plan to check the journals? (Many people like to pick up journals each class period or each week, taking only a few at a time.) 

Do you want your students to insert class handouts in the journal? May students include notes from other classes in their journals? Some teachers like spiral notebooks; others prefer looseleaf, which allows students to pull out pages, staple them with a coversheet, and then reinsert them in the journal when they are returned.

What you set up at the beginning of class will affect you and your students the entire semester. By doing this basic planning, you will find journals a very useful tool both for you and for your students.