For faculty members teaching online courses, student journaling represents a flexible teaching strategy that brings a high-touch element to digital learning. Journaling functions as an authentic assessment by allowing students to demonstrate their understanding through personal reflection, application, and meaning-making rather than memorization. It captures the learning process in real time, offering faculty insight into how students connect theory to experience and may provide insight into when and how to provide targeted support for a student learning process gone off track.

As Voegele, Benson, and Gallavan emphasize in  “Four Powerful Practices to Promote Student Success,”  strategies such as journaling that build connections between instructors and students can contribute to fostering curiosity, communication, connections, and compassion leading to improved learning outcomes.

Incorporating journaling into your online course may serve to

• Encourage reflection
• Deepen understanding through personal connection
• Foster critical thinking and self-awareness
• Focus students
• Enhance the instructor-student relationship
• Reduce the students’ feelings of isolation
• Find out how students are feeling about the class without doing a full survey
• Address Regular and Substantive Interaction requirements for online courses

Types of Journaling Assignments

Journaling assignments can take many forms, offering faculty members flexibility in how they structure reflection and engagement.

Common approaches include:

1. Reflective journals in which students respond to weekly course materials and are asked to connect ideas and themes to personal experiences.
2. Analytical journals in which students are asked to critically evaluate key concepts and integrate ideas.
3. Personal journals in which students are encouraged to share whatever is on their mind with the instructor. It may or may not be directly related to the coursework.
4. Application journals in which students are asked to apply theories or concepts to real world situations. These may include case studies or scenarios.

Regular and Substantive Interaction (RSI)

If properly structured, online journals could count toward Regular and Substantive Interaction required by the U.S. Department of Education for all online courses in which students receive Title IV Funds. For those unfamiliar with this requirement, please take a look at the  Regular and Substantive Interaction page on the COLRS website  for more information.

Here are some tips for creating a journaling assignment that meets RSI requirements:

• Use instructor-initiated prompts: Start by creating weekly journal prompts that are directly related to the course content, such as asking students to analyze a concept, apply a theory, or reflect on a case study.
• Offer substantive feedback: Review student journal entries and provide personalized, content-specific feedback. This could include answering questions, elaborating on a point, or connecting their thoughts to other course material.
• Facilitate discussions: Journals can be used to initiate a one-on-one discussion or to gather ideas to be used in a larger class discussion assignment.

Journal assignments that DO NOT meet DOE requirements for Regular and Substantive Interaction include:

• Relying on student-initiated interaction
• Trivial interactions or interactions not focused on course content
• Non-substantive feedback

Resources

• Bean, J. C. (2011). Engaging ideas: The professor’s guide to integrating writing, critical thinking, and active learning in the classroom (2nd ed.). Jossey-Bass.
• Moon, J. A. (2006). Learning journals: A handbook for reflective practice and professional development (2nd ed.). RoutledgeFalmer.
• Dyment, J. E., & O’Connell, T. S. (2011). Assessing the quality of reflection in student journals: A review of the research. Teaching in Higher Education, 16(1), 81–97.
• Voegele, C. M., Benson, T. R., & Gallavan, N. P. (2025, January 10). Four powerful practices to promote student success. Faculty Focus.