course journal assignment write a reflection paper
course journal assignment write a reflection paper
Course Journal Assignment
“Thinking About University”
October 18, 2018
Using the template posted in the Course Journal Reflections folder, insert three of the five journal entries that you have completed. Choose the three journal entries that are the most informative – i.e., the entries that are the richest in ideas. Next, write a commentary on the three journal entries that you choose. Ensure to follow the directions outlined in the handout titled – Course Journal: “Thinking About University”.
o to University Education
EDUC 1000
Course Journal: “Thinking about University”
1
General Discussion, Journal Format and Submission Requirements, and
Assessment of the Journal
General Discussion
It is quite likely that the idea of a
course journal is new to many of you, and so
you will be concerned to know how you should proceed in developing your
journal for this class. Course journals (often called learning portfolios) have been
implemented for some time in academic fields such as w
riting, communications,
and the fine arts, and they are becoming more common across the university curriculum. The
content of the course journal tends to vary from one class to another, according to the learning
goals identified by the instructor, and acco
rding to the nature of the discipline under study. As I
have indicated earlier, the purpose of the journal
,
in this class
, is to provide an opportunity for
you to engag
e in thought and reflection on
your experience the university
and of your developing
und
erstanding of what it means to be a student in university.
Your
“
T
hinking about University
”
journal will be comprised of
two items
:
1.
a set of
reflections
and
2.
a commentary
on these reflections. The purpose of the reflections will be
to have you think about
university on a regular basis
. Accordingly, you will be given time in class
each week to write your reflections. The purpose of the commentary will be to have you
reconsi
der your reflections with a view to assessing what they reveal about your attitude to
the
university and to how you are coping with the learning challenges with which you are being
presented.
Journal Format and Submission Requirements
At the end of term,
you will be submitting your journal for assessment. Please prepare your
journal according to the format provided below:
Section I: Selection
of Reflections
In this section, you will provide a typed transcript of
3 only
of your weekly reflections. You wil
l
select these out of the total number of reflections you have completed during the term. For this
reason, it is important to record and keep all of your reflections. Obviously, you will want to
select reflections that are significant in terms of revealing
something interesting and important
about your attitude to
university education.
For the purposes of the journal, each of the 3
reflections you have selected must be on a separate page. Accordingly, there will be 3 pages in
Section I. Each reflection sho
uld be dated according to the day it was written in class. The pages
of Section I should be titled, consecutively as: Reflection #1, Reflection #2, Reflection #3.
Section II: Commentary
In this section, you will consider the
3
reflections you have selecte
d with a view to answering
these questions:
1. What do these reflections tell me about my attitude /s
to the
university
? 2. What do these reflections tell me about
how I am adapting to the
new learning environment of the university
?
You will need to
explain
your answer to
1
Revised version, developed by Dr. Shelagh Crooks, Saint Mary’s University, 2015
2
each of these questions, and
illustrate your explanation
using examples from your
reflections. Your commentary should occupy no more than 1
–
1.5 pages of text.
How will I be assessing your journals?
If you are to
develop as a
learner
, you will need to develop as a writer. And to develop as a
writer, you must impose upon yourself the same standards that any competent writer imposes
upon herself. The key question I will be asking as I grade your journal is,
“Does thi
s journal
provide a clear and coherent account of how this
person
is developing as a
student in university
?”
Achieving Clarity and Coherence
The
clarity and coherence of your work
will improve if you bear some key points in mind.
§
Clarify the question or
issue
you are focused on and stick to that question or issue
throughout your writing. When you do not make clear what it is that you are dealing with
or drift from one issue to another, you confuse the reader, and show a lack of focus.
§
Show in your writin
g that you have considered
alternative points of view
in regard
to the issue. Doing this demonstrates that you are exercising your own capacity to engage
in self
–
criticism, and it precludes the reader from criticizing you for neglecting to take
obvious al
ternatives into account.
§
Strive to write so that you
make clear precisely what you mean
. When you write
sentences that can be interpreted in many different ways, you demonstrate that you are
writing, and, presumably, thinking in a muddled way, and you leav
e it to the reader to
construct his own interpretation of what you mean. Often, the reader will get it wrong.
§
Give examples
and illustrations frequently, and be sure to do so whenever you are
introducing a new idea. You want to make connections between you
r ideas and the real
world, and you want to show that you understand just how these connections work.
When you do not do this, the reader is left to fill in the spaces in your thought for you
—
creating examples that may or may not fit with what you inten
d.
§
Stipulate the
meaning of key concepts or ideas
that you deploy in your writing, so
that the reader is knows just how you intend these ideas to be understood and can judge
what you are saying appropriately.
§
Make clear the logical relations
between the s
entences and paragraphs you write.
If you wish something to be understood as evidence for something else
, you
need to say
so; if you are drawing a conclusion indicate that this is so, by using words like ‘thus’ and
‘therefore’, if you are shifting to a dis
cussion of a new aspect of your topic, make this
clear by starting a new paragraph. When you do not make clear
—
with appropriate
transitional words, critical vocabulary and paragraphing
—
the logical relations between
the sentences you write, you give t
he reader reason to believe that you do not fully
understand the structure of your own thinking. You never, ever, want someone to come
away from reading your work with such a view.
§
Above all, it is important to remember that your writing reveals
what you
a
re thinking on any given topic,
and what you have learned about it
. If you
want to be taken seriously as a competent and insightful thinker
and
learner
, and as someone who can generate new ideas,
you must take great
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