Electronic Journaling: Using the Web-Based, Group Journal for Service-Learning Reflection.
2001; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1944-0219
Autores Tópico(s)Social Work Education and Practice
Resumothink journals are pretty effective, but the problem with journals is that it's so self contained and you can't share your reflections with other people. 'Cause sometimes it takes like one word, where you're like, 'Wow'--from somebody else's mouth. That really helps you reflect more ... I think it's really ... sharing ideas within the group--verbalizing it--then everybody learns. Everybody gains. --University of Colorado student (Eyler, Giles, & Schmiede, 1996, p. 37) Student journaling has been heralded in service-learning literature as an effective teaching tool to help students reflect on their community service experience. Recent research validates the belief that journaling helps students discover, integrate, and apply the lessons of their service-learning experience on a broader, deeper, and more conscious level (de Acosta, 1995; Eyler & Giles, 1999; Eyler, Giles, & Schmiede, 1996). This paper chronicles my experience with the journaling component of the service-learning course I teach in the department of Family & Child Sciences at Florida State University. I describe my transition from traditional, private journals to a Web-based, interactive format allowing students and myself immediate access to the journaling of their classmates over the course of the semester. I include a brief review of service-learning research as it relates to journaling, my pedagogical justification for switching formats, and details of how this technology works in my classroom. I also assess this approach and its results by focusing on actual journal entries and student evaluations received over the last four semesters. Reflection, Journaling, and Service-Learning: A Brief View of the Research Reflective practice, in which service-learning students monitor their own reactions and thinking processes in a deliberate manner, is an essential element of quality teaching in service-learning (Eyler & Giles, 1997, 1999; Silcox, 1993). The hyphen in service-learning, reflective activities provide a vital link between student activity and academic learning in the service-learning process (Eyler & Giles, 1999). Student journaling, in which students privately record their service-learning experiences through informal, personalized writing, takes its place alongside classroom and small-group discussions, written papers, and faculty-student conversations in the spectrum of reflective practices used in the service-learning classroom. Journals occupy a unique place in the array of reflective practices by giving students a safe place to withdraw temporarily and create an ongoing, informal record of meaningful aspects of their own learning process. de Acosta (1995) writes that journals rarely reflect ideas that are already fixed in a student's mind. Rather, journalers engage in as they choose observations, thoughts, feelings, and connections to record. Journaling is particularly salient in the context of community service because such meaning-making directly relates to students' decisions regarding their course of action in the field. Furthermore, there is some evidence that undergraduate journaling can actually accelerate the ability to cope with significant stressors. Pennebaker, Colder, and Sharp (1990) found that college freshmen who wrote about coming to college fared better in terms of health, grade-point average, and positive mood than a control group who spent the same amount of journaling time writing on superficial topics. This finding relates directly to service-learning since, for many students, community volunteer work presents brand new environmental challenges and journaling may prove an effective tool in this process (Eyler, Giles, & Schmiede, 1996). Educators from diverse fields support journaling as an effective tool to develop critical thinking skills (Fulwiler, 1987; Lukinsky, 1990). Fulwiler identified several types of journal entries to develop critical thinking, including general observations, questions, speculative statements, expressions of self-awareness, statements of synthesis, revision of previously held ideas, and the accumulation of new information. …
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