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Introduction to the Reading Journal
In this course, you will keep a reading
journal in which you will interact with our text, exploring your
responses
to several questions about concepts and methods from the reading.
While improving your writing skills may be a beneficial side-effect,
the main purpose of the journal is to stimulate your thinking about
fundamental questions, problems, and issues raised by your study of
computer organization and architecture. Thus, you will be rewarded—in
terms of the
knowledge you acquire and the evaluation you receive—more for the
process of thinking than for the end product. This kind of
writing is called "exploratory" writing
because it allows you to explore your thoughts by "thinking out
loud," rather than being concerned with the effectiveness of your
writing for other readers. Features of formal writing, such as
organization,
will be less important in your journal than when you are writing for an
audience.
Such journal writing helps many students focus their thinking and
become more productive in their learning.
I loved the reading journal and I love reading the
entries now.
It was honestly one of the most valuable exercises I did in college.
It really should be mandatory in nearly every class.
The sneaky thing that I've realized ... is that I
usually end
up solving my own query. Without this question, I may have glossed
over something that I wasn't totally sure about, but whenever I have
to write about it I end up figuring it out! Then I go back to find
something else, because I can't just leave the question blank, and
so on, and eventually the reading gets a lot more clear. So that's
a really good thing.
As you
ask more questions and question more answers, you will truly be
thinking
like a computer scientist.
- What do I write in my journal?
- A link from the course schedule
will provide a short series of 2-3 questions. These questions
will
usually require you to process the day's reading, looking for cues
to important concepts or relations among ideas. Most of the time, I
will give clear instructions on what exactly it will mean
elaborate or explore your thinking for a particular question. When
you are quoting material from the textbook, you should reference page
numbers and page location cues such as "top," "middle," or
"bottom."
- What kinds of questions will you ask?
- While I may ask a variety of questions, they will often fall
into
one of four categories: prioritization, translation, analogy, and metacognition.
Prioritization questions help build your critical reading skills.
Translation questions help you make sense of new and unfamiliar ideas
by expressing them in your own words.
Similarly, analogies extend your understanding of the unfamiliar and
new by comparing them to something familiar. Finally, metacognition questions ask you to reflect on your learning process.
- How long do my answers have to
be?
- Like most real-life situations, the
answer is "it depends."
Sometimes
you will be asked to justify an answer in 3-5 sentences. Other times
you will be asked to explain a concept as you would to your friend's
kid sister. Just how long do you think she is going to wait?
Your answer length should thus be targeted appropriately.
- How long do I have to spend on each
journal entry?
- Once again, the answer is "it
depends." If you have faithfully read
and studied the assigned
material, exploring your thoughts will likely
take about 15-
30 minutes. Some questions will take you longer than
others. One
main reason for the variance may include your need to react to,
process,
and interact with some new and perhaps challenging concepts.
- Do I get automatic credit for
answering the
questions?
- While
I have explained above that
your main focus will not
usually
be formal writing, I will be looking for evidence that you
are thinking seriously about the topics in the reading. Your responses
should clearly exhibit your wrangling with concepts, leaving no doubt
that you have done your reading and studying before attempting to
answer the questions. A superficial response will receive partial
credit, while a truly insightful response will receive extra credit.
- Unlike an exam, your reading journal gives you the freedom to
err.
Writing helps you to internalize new concepts; sometimes you may get
them mixed up and that is okay. A journal entry that shows a mind
struggling with an idea is often the most interesting for someone
else (including yourself later) to read.
- So, how formal is this whole
enterprise?
- As described above, this is
exploratory writing. While I do not expect beautifully
architected paragraphs, I do require responses composed
of complete sentences obeying the usual rules of grammar and proper
spelling.
- How should I present my journal
entries?
- Log on to CLEo and
navigate to the site for this course.
The
side menu has an entry entitled "Reading Journal." Navigate there
and you will be able to add new entries. You should create one entry
for each day's questions. The assignment for each day's questions
will have a title at the top
that you will use as your entry title, so that I know which
day's questions you are answering. You should separate your answers
with numbers indicating the particular question being addressed.
- In addition, so that you are not at the whim of the network or
your web browser, you should compose your response in a separate text
processing program first (which allows you to use a spellchecker),
and paste your response into the new post text box when you are
finished
and ready.
- Who can read my journal entries?
- I
intend the reading journal to be a private space where you can work out
ideas without fear of embarassment or censure. I have configured our
course tools so that I can read and comment on your journal entries,
but no one else should see them. If you find that you can see other
students' journal entries, please let me know ASAP!
- How can I use my journal entries after I write them?
- As we will often discuss the reading journal questions in class,
you may want to print your journal entry and bring it to class with you.
- I encourage you to review your journal entries after each day's
class. If you are so moved, write a comment in response to your journal
entry that explains how your understanding of the topic evolved during
class. At times, you may find your understanding has changed so
much that you want to rewrite your response. I will review your journal
at the end of the semester and may reward such comments with extra credit.
- You may also use your journal as a study guide for important
concepts that may appear on exams (hint, hint).
Janet
Davis (davisj@whitman.edu)
Created August 23, 2013
Last revised September 1, 2015
Acknowledgments: The text above
is largely borrowed from a similar
assignment by Jerod Weinman. He
draws from Engaging Ideas
(John C. Bean, Josey-Bass 2001) and Concentric Thinking (Mark Hoffman
and Timothy Dansdill, 2008). I have revised some portions of the text
into my own voice and
added the question about using journal entries.
This work is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.