Purpose

The purpose of the discussion journal is for you to gather together your discussion posts and responses from the semester in order to reflect on your own learning. This practice of thinking about learning is also known as metacognition and can be a powerful tool in successful learning.

Audience

The audience of your discussion journal is yourself and Dr. J.  You can write in a semi-formal style, use “I” language, and more colloquial language as needed to convey your ideas in your own voice. Try to follow the guidelines for good writing you would learn in a first-year writing class—have focused paragraphs, aim for clear and correct sentences, limit errors, and avoid biased and inflammatory language.

Content

The content of your discussion journal includes several items, most of which you’ve already written throughout the semester: discussion posts, responses, and a reflection essay.

I suggest creating a single document, and organizing it so it’s easy to follow by labeling the items you include (such, as Discussion 1 Post, Discussion 1 Response, etc.).

Discussion posts and responses

Include all of your original posts from the semester. I suggest drafting your posts and responses in a document outside of canvas so you always have a back up, and can simply copy and paste your posts/responses into canvas from your document. This process will also help you to get started on this journal from the very beginning of the semester, making it much easier and less time consuming to organize at the end of the semester. If you choose to do audio or video discussions and comments, you won’t be able to gather them all in one place, and that’s okay. You–and I–will have to go back to each discussion to review them.

Include all required and extra responses you wrote. See above for the suggested process.

Reflection essay

In this 500-750 word, typed, double spaced essay, I invite you to reflect on your learning by answering the following questions:

· What are your strongest discussion posts and responses? Why do you think these are the strongest ones?

· What discussion posts and responses would you write differently now that you’ve completed the class? Why would you want to make these changes?

· What readings and/or film have you learned the most from? What did you learn from it? Why do you think think these readings/films have helped you learn the most?

· What reading/film has challenged you the most, and why?

· What gender studies concepts have you been most successful in understanding and applying, and why?

· What gender studies concepts have been most challenging to understand and apply? Why?

· After reviewing your discussion posts, where do you see the most growth in your learning? Where do you see an opportunity to continue learning?