What is it?
Journals, along with discussion boards and conversations, are a vital part of student learning. Not only do they allow students to reflect on and respond to course content, but it allows instructors to gain an insight into how their course content is being perceived and to track student progress.
What does it do?
Journals and discussion boards are nearly identical. However, journals are an area of reflection that can be shared privately between tutors and individual students, whereas discussion posts are seen by everyone in the course (or everyone in the group if it was assigned to a group).
- Track students’ learning journeys
- Gain feedback on how course content is perceived
- Provides students with an opportunity to reflect and respond to course content
- Identify areas for further consideration/improvement
What should I know?
Step 1: Navigate to the main Course Content page. Hover over where you want the discussion board to be, then click on the +, and select Create from the menu.
Step 2: In the side panel, select Journal at the bottom of the options.
Step 3: Just like with discussion boards, you can change the title, enter a prompt, and change the availability of the item to students. For the time being, settings are very limited in journals and you can only make the item marked and determine the marking settings.