Oxford Centre for Staff and Learning Development
Open educational resources (OERs)

Your learning log

You have begun a short, yet fast moving course, which for many of you is likely to be one of your earliest experiences of being an online learner (we're confident there will be more!). For the next month or so we ask you to keep a log of this experience and learning. As we don't expect you to be able to implement what you learn from the course immediately, we hope that the prompts we give you along the way will help you form a personal record of your learning on the course which you'll be able to use at a later time.

Why a log?

There are potentially many different reasons to recommend the keeping of a learning log. Jenny Moon lists 18 different purposes for journal keeping (Moon, 1999, p.189-194), but to give you some idea of why a log might be useful on this particular course, we picked out just a few of these reasons:

• To record experience. Having empathy with your online students later will be of great benefit, so for now, it will be helpful to record both what you experience as an online learner and how it makes you feel.
• To develop a questioning attitude. Our course approach is based around developing a critical and questioning attitude to your work. In your log you can record your observations and questions as they arise, but also use it to return to later to look again at your developing thoughts and work.
• To increase personal ownership of learning. Although we have devised expected aims and learning outcomes for this course, it is likely that each of you will take away something different from the reading, thinking and experience of working online. Your log is a place to record the personal implications of what we do.

What, when and how much to write

We'll give you prompts at certain stages in the course of what you might like to include in your log, but please don't feel limited by this. You can write in your log once a week (guided by our prompts) or every time you logon or do some work for the course. The prompts we'll give you will be

• clarifying your expectations for the course as an induction activity
• reflecting on your learning at the end of each week's activities
• an exit report at the course end

Some people write fully and fluently with each log entry running to several pages, others produce bullet points, notes or even sketches. It really doesn't matter what format your log takes as long as it suits you. Although, if you know how you prefer to write and learn already, this might influence your choice of where you keep your log (see below).

How and where to do it?

As your log is primarily for you, (rather than for viewing or assessing by the course team), we've made some suggestions below about where you might like to keep your log.

• Word processor. Probably the simplest way to keep a log is using the word processor you are familiar with already. You can then have this 'log file' open alongside the course materials as you work. You might wish to use Google docs if you will be accessing the course from different computers.
• Blog (short for 'web log'). A blog is simply a series of chronological postings onto a website. They often take the form of a personal diary written and published by anyone from journalists in exceptional circumstances to call centre operatives.

If you don't know much about blogs and blogging you might want to read the short guide we have provided on the topic. See the OCSLD guide to blogging and/or Flickr: OCSLD guide to getting started for a short guide on online image storing.

You will have noticed that the suggestions above are electronic. You'll probably find that this is easier than keeping a paper based log because it allows you to cut and paste between the log and the course materials, either because you've found an idea or reference you don't want to lose, or because some of the activities ask you to contribute extracts from your log.

What happens to it?

We'll never ask to see your entire log, although we would like you to select and report on extracts from it each week so that we can share in some aspects of your learning experiences during this course. Otherwise what you do with it is up to you. We hope that the log will not only deepen the learning experience for you during the course but become a resource for your future work.

References

Moon, J. (1999) Reflection in Learning and Professional Development. Kogan Page, London.