How to Create, Use, and Grade Journals

Follow the instructions, or watch the video, to learn how to create a journal in Blackboard Ultra.

When to Use?

Journals are personal spaces for students to communicate privately with you. Students can also use journals as a self-reflective tool. They can post their opinions, ideas, and concerns about the course, or discuss and analyze course-related materials.

You can create journal assignments that are broad and student-directed. Students can reflect on the learning process and document changes in their perceptions and attitudes. Students can describe the problems faced and how they solved them. You can also create instructor-directed journal entries that are more formal in nature. You can narrow the focus with a list of topics for discussion.

Journals are ideal for individual projects. For example, in a creative writing course, each student creates entries and you provide comments. In this manner, a student can refine a section of a writing assignment over a period of time, with your guidance and suggestions. Students can also comment on their own entries to continue the conversation.

Procedure

Create a Journal

On the Course Content page, select the plus sign wherever you want to add a journal. Select Create, then scroll down to the Journal button at the bottom of the Create Item panel. You can also expand a folder or learning module to add a journal within them.

Enter a meaningful title to help students find the right journal in the content list. If you don't add a title, "New Journal" and the date appear on the Course Content page.

1. Add a prompt to set expectations and guidelines. You can use the options in the editor to format text, attach files, and embed multimedia. If you don’t add a prompt, there’s a message for students on the journal page that you haven’t added instructions for this journal.
2. Show or hide the journal. New journals are hidden by default. Students can't access a journal until you choose to make it available to students. You can create all your content ahead of time and choose what you want students to view based on your schedule. You can also set availability conditions based on date, time, and performance on other items in the course gradebook. On the Course Content page, students can see when you set the journal to show.
3. Customize journal settings. In the Journal Settings panel, you can choose whether or not to allow users to edit and delete entries or comments. Under Goals & Standards, you can select Align with goals to ensure the activity measures the desired learning outcomes. To motivate students to post insightful contributions, you can make a journal count for a grade. Graded journals have more settings options available.

When someone contributes to a journal, an activity icon appears next to the title on the Course Content page. Select the title to open the journal. You can also open a journal from the activity stream.

The journal has two tabs. The Journal tab displays the prompt you’ve entered. Ungraded journals have a Participation tab and graded journals have a Grades & Participation tab.

Both graded and ungraded journals display each of your students’ names in a list on the Participation tab, organized alphabetically by surname. You can select how many items you see per page, up to 100.

You can search by a student’s name in both ungraded and graded journals to view how many entries they’ve made in the journal.

Use the Student Status menu to see only students who have made no entries, or students who have made an entry. By default, the menu is set to view all student statuses.

Graded journals allow you to sort by grading status through the Grading Status menu. Statuses available are:

• Needs Grading
• Needs Posting
• Completed
• Nothing to Grade

You can override or post grades from the Grades & Participation tab.

After you select a student’s name in the list in the Participation tab, you can view all the entries that student made and your responses. If there are many entries on the page, you can adjust the number of items to display with a maximum of twenty.

You can grade the journal directly by entering the grade in the grading pill or select the Feedback icon, displayed as a plus sign, to leave feedback. You can edit your feedback after you’ve posted it using the three dot menu.

New entries or comments in a journal cause a NEW icon to display with them.

Select Comment below an entry to respond to a student’s entry by bringing up the text box. The rich text editor allows you to customize your response’s appearance and embed media. Commenting on an entry creates a thread.

You can also make a new entry in a student’s journal. Select the text box that displays Type an entry. The student can then respond to your question or comment.

You can select the More options menu associated with a journal entry or comment to edit or delete it. You must give users permission to edit or delete entries or comments for the edit or delete options to appear. Permission for editing and deleting entries is separate from editing and deleting comments.

After an entry has comments, you can select Hide Comments to see only the first comment in a thread. To display all comments again, select Show Comments. To move between students’ journal entries without returning to the Participation tab, you can select the arrow buttons to the left and right at the top of the entry.

If you edit any content in the journal, students aren't notified that new content appears.

You can change a journal from graded to ungraded as long as there are no entries or comments. Once entries and comments have been submitted, you can't change the journal type.

If you delete a graded journal, the journal is removed from the Course Content page and the gradebook.

 

The following narrated video provides a visual and auditory representation of some of the information included on this page. For a detailed description of what is portrayed in the video, open the video on YouTube, navigate to More actions, and select Open transcript.