James,
Yes, it can be like a review of daily events, or most important events or thoughts documented for review later. One of the latent benefits is to reflect on notes made many months or even years back. These often reveal growth, maturity as an instructor, improvement, and strengthening as an instructor.
Barry Westling
A teaching journal can help track learning, insights, discoveries, mistakes, failed attempts, and various experiments. It can help a teacher reflect back over time, examine approaches, techniques, and strategies.
Elizabeth,
Right. Thought, memories, ideas - all things like this can get lost in the "world of good intentions" unless we find a way to capture them in a repository for later review.The journal is one way to corral them all in one place.
Barry Westling
This is something that I will use. Sometimes you have a brainstorm and forget about the details of the execution in later classes.
Joseph,
I agree, feedback from as sources as possible can only help reponsible instructors reflect on how others view their instructional delievery and performance. If we want to make improvements, we need feedback, such as you describe.
Barry Westling
I useful tool for me are the student critiques. Self evals and notes to self are valuable but so are comments from the students. they have at times brought up positive (but unintentional) aspects of my teaching techniques they liked as well as aspects they didn't. The student comments combined with my own observations give me a useful tool to refer back to when prepping for next class.
Traneika,
This sounds great. I like journaling. I find I'd like to stop and make a notation at times, and sometimes I'm able to do that, but most times I have to make a notation at a break or immediately after class. For me, if I don't do it soon after, I'll forget. Nonethetheless, it's a wonderful tool and activity for instructors.
Barry Westling
Keeping a journal or notes is a great tool! I keep a record log of each class/each day and write the pros/cons in bright ink of what went wrong that day. For example, I may have logged that I will lecture and assign classwork. In my notes section, I would put "students were drifting off/yawning; may need to add class discussions or group work next time. Some of my textbooks are helpful with the content, it may have "topics of discussion" or "critical thinking" exercises. I am sure to add those in my lectures. Keeping a journal log, really helps me each day to improve and become more creative!
Susan ,
Instructors that have adopted journalizing as a regular habit and routine find that it helps them a couple of ways. The thing is the teaching journal can be whatever format and content the instuctor chooses to include. But over time, reflecting personal comments, observations, needs, wants, hopes, etc. can be invaluable as an introspective assessment of growth and improvement as an instructor. Of course, this can only occur by journalizing, and observing notations made over months and years.
Barry Westling
As an instructor for over 8 1/2 years and award winning lecturer, I must admit that I have been going in circles on one specific issue. That issue is classroom management. I consider myself a very reflective person but I am a very impatient writer.
It is time for me to fine tune my awareness and process with students whose personalities are stronger than mine. After a challenging day today I am convinced that journaling is the next step for me to take towards addressing this issue. I can think of no better way to track what works and help me strategize my next steps. I'll keep you posted.
David ,
It'[s been said is an individual with a history of mistakes behind them. Perhaps not totally true, but the message is we should learn from our mistakes (of course it's implied we should learn from them and avoid making the same mistakes again). And a teaching journal can assist tracking what's working and what may need improvement, especially when viewed over time.
Barry Westling
I believe using a teaching journal will help me better chart my progress, any challenges, or opportunities that affect the different aspects of each class. I will better determine what areas I could then apply in other classes based on the student responses. Better to chart the course to avoid making the same or similar mistakes in the future.
maritza,
The improvement over time (perhaps we could call this growth) is best viewed over time, and therefore, time with journalizing will be required to truely see it's helpfulness.
Barry Westling
This is a great idea! This is a great way to analyze your progress, its very easy to just continue with the next lecture, but actually sitting down and reviewing whether changes need to be made to your approach to a subject, allows constant improvement. ALso, using a teching journal also helps you to constantly improve by making small changes every time if needed instead of realizing by midterms that students are not getting the material.
Wendy,
Part of the process of journizing is to reflect on past notes. Since these are solely for the benefit of the instructor, over time, it's very reasonable to expect that adjustments or modifications in the methodology, content, or style may be made in the notations as time progresses. That's one aspect of looking back to view what was deemed important may not seem as important. Usually, over weeks, months, or years, instructors will experience growth, improvement, and higher achievements as an effective instructor, in part through their self analysis by someone who knows them well - themselves!
Barry Westling
Hi, Barry,
Your comments make a lot of sense and I'm sure you're right. My question of the effectiveness comes in from consistency. I'm afraid I would do a great job at first, then peter out as the term progresses.
From the work I've done on documenting software, I've found that when I'm deep into a topic, I can write myself a note about the topic that makes perfect sense at the time. But, after a few days when my memory of the event has cooled, a lot of times my comments are so sketchy they make little sense at all. So, for me, the choice becomes one of full documentation or none at all, since cryptic notes are worse than nothing.
Any tips to remind myself to do this documentation and to do it fully?
I am somewhat overwhelmed as a new instructor. I am definitely a subject matter expert but I have miles to go before I can classify myself as an Instructional Delivery Expert. It's easy for me to get caught up in the survival mode of preparing for the next lesson that I will forget key experiences harmonious and hair raising alike that would have helped me the next quarter.
I have already been keeping a journal of online course content that I can revisit but now I will start a classroom journal as well.
Wendy,
It can be helpful. My suggestion is to start small, and try different methods until you find the method that works best for you. When you find that method, commit to stay consistent with entries. One big benefit is the reflection on past notations, especially when viewed over a greater time span of weeks, months, and even years. That's where we will see improvemnet, growth, and perhaps trends that suggest weaker areas we can work on. Good luck.
Barry Westling
I've never kept a teaching journal relying on memory, but after reading some of these posts, I think I'll start.
Richard,
The ability to reflect weeksw, months or even years later can be very instructive. Using a journal can accomplish that goal nicely.
Barry Westling
