Learning journals
I've been re-reading the articles for next week ahead of our usual teaching meeting. In particular I've been thinking about Marilyn Daudelin's article Learning from experience through reflection.
Firstly, I've been wondering if this reading should be earlier in the course; say during the first week. Would it make a difference to quality of the journals that people have to do? (This is a very different from the question "Could it make a difference to the quality of journals that people have to do?"). But then it struck me –perhaps we should adopt learning journals instead of 'vanilla' journals. (There is plenty of information on learning journals on the web. See here, here, or here– these are just a few from a Google search –I didn't even attempt to find a quality source from somewhere like the Journal of Management Education–and yes, there are a couple of article there (one even cites Daudelin)). So maybe in week one we could have student's read the Learning from experience through reflection article, do some research into learning journals, and then write a learning journal each week from that first week.
My questions are: (1) would students learn more this way, (2) how many marks, if any, should be associated with this task, and (3) would students actually read more?
Anyway, I'd be interested in some feedback on this, so please "mail me with your thoughts.
Having said all of this, and having read the afore-linked articles above, including the two in JME, I'm very tempted to do trial it. And so, a la Kolb (David A. Kolb, not Darl Kolb), I prepare to go round the leaning cycle-again.