Students’ attitudes surrounding daily blog-style journaling for a summer study-away program.

Concurrent Session 9

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

How do students feel about journaling assignments? This study is focused on students’ attitudes toward journaling. We’ll discuss data collected from before and after surveys administered to a class who participated in a summer study-away experience where students were prompted to engage in ongoing recursive reflection and produce daily public blog posts.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Haley Sankey, Penn State-College of Earth and Mineral Sciences

Haley Sankey is a faculty member, adviser and Program Coordinator for the online Bachelor of Arts in Energy and Sustainability Policy, instructing EGEE 495: Internship Experience, EGEE 299: Foreign Studies, and EM SC 302: Orientation to Energy and Sustainability Policy. She is also an adviser for the World Campus Sustainability Club, an online student-run organization. Haley received her master's degree in project management from the Penn State Black School of Business. She earned her B.S. from Juniata College, where her program of emphasis was environmental practice and policy.

Co-presenter: Maria Scalzi Wherley, John A. Dutton e-Education Institute at Penn State

Maria Scalzi Wherley is a Learning Designer and Writer-in-Residence with the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. She has over a decade of teaching experience, serving a wide variety of learners a diverse range of subjects. She has also worked at the state level to design curriculum for public schools. Maria holds an M. Ed. In Curriculum and Instruction from Penn State University.

Extended Abstract

Historically, researchers have focused on the applicability and perceived benefits of using journaling to capture learning. But how do students feel about daily journaling during out-of-the-classroom engagement experiences? Do they view journaling as valuable or as drudgery? The presenters have spent a considerable amount of time
better understanding and advancing the use of journaling as an assessment tool for engagement (out-of-the-classroom) experiences, and in a recent study, we’ve asked students for their feedback.

For a summer 2022 study-away experience, students were required to submit eight blog posts (journal entries) related to their travel, including two pre-travel journal entries and one post-travel entry. During the study-away experience, students were provided prompts on five different topics and were instructed to choose from a different topic for each of four days, addressing 3-5 prompts in each 500-word-minimum post. A free-writing day was included, where students could freely reflect on their experiences on the trip as related to their individual final project proposals.

A literature review supports the idea that public blogs, with guided prompts, timely feedback, and a “real” audience (beyond the instructor) can aid students’ learning and cause writers to be thoughtful and careful when conveying their thoughts. Students in this study-away experience produced their journal entries as blog posts and were surveyed before and after the program about their attitudes and feelings toward this type of journaling and how it did or didn’t impact their learning. We were especially interested in whether students felt free to write without constraint, whether they appreciated well-wrought prompts, whether they preferred free-writing or not, and whether they thought that journaling helped them process new experiences and produced higher level learning, deep growth, and understanding. It is known that journaling can be helpful in developing metacognitive thinking by guiding students to process and express their experiences and associated thoughts. Guided reflection has the potential to help students engage more deeply with this 2022 short-term, study-away experience and to help them record their personal learning. The results of this study will help determine the use of future journaling assignments in this course and others like it.

Information gathered from the surveys will provide insight into students’ thoughts regarding the usefulness of journaling assignments. This is relevant for others looking to utilize journaling as an assessment tool.

Participants will engage in discussion surrounding our survey results, blog-style journaling vs. posts written solely for instructor eyes, and their own attitudes toward prompt-driven journaling versus freewriting.

Survey results will provide insights into students’ thoughts regarding journaling assignments.