Active journaling is an important part of the learning and development journey for students, graduates and young professionals. Critical insights gained, references acquired, people and event’s names and other essential new neural learning associations created during a “learning opportunity”, will be fairly quickly lost if not committed to an effective learning and memory formation technique. This will facilitate far more accurate memory retention and recall of the key facts and contextual nuances at a later date.

 

The ongoing research and rapid advancement in the study of the neurosciences has shown conclusively that the process of “learn one, do one, teach one” is by far the most effective way of acquiring and proving new knowledge assimilating for long-term memory (LTM) recall and when combined with a powerful emotional stimulus will enable long-lasting-memory (LLM) formation.

 

Senior students, graduates, candidates and young registered professionals will be required by their respective professional bodies and associations to submit proof of experiential learning and development progress through the submission of training and experience reports, logbooks, training courses, and continuing professional development courses.

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This may require the accurate referencing of learning events into the appropriate developmental categories, competencies, standards, and outcomes dictated by each professional body, institution, or association and could also include the level of work at the which the learning opportunity was recorded (e.g. Entry Level to Independent or Professionally Competent Level; or 1 to 5, etc).

 

It is critical to capture journal entries as a “learning and discovery” experience and not merely as a bystander or journalist of an event.

 

Clearly identify any key assumptions, complex problem solving, and innovative solutions evident and importantly comment on the possible interdependencies involving the technical, financial, human, legal, environmental, and risk elements of the learning and journaling.

 

Be conscious of the learning and development expectations outlined in the competencies and outcomes framework from your professional body.

 

This combination of regular semantic and episodic learning experiences can be very effectively recorded as a series of small “granular” learning events in the form of journal entries and then collated and compiled into a full experiential report or professional registration submission at the appropriate time in the future.

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CAPTURING JOURNAL ENTRIES

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• Select the appropriate Primary Body

• Select an Activity or Project from the list already loaded, or alternatively, add a new one

• If your selected competency framework has a 3rd layer of learning activities, you can select these so that your Journal entry is associated with the correct developmental areas

• Add the Date, Time and Duration of the learning activity - the durations are accumulated over time and will give you an accurate record of the total amount of time spent in each learning activity

• Select the Degree of Responsibility / Level of Proficiency at which you performed the learning event or activity (this is generally dictated by the competency framework model used)

• Identify your levels of any Previous Exposure to the selected framework item - None (Red)  / Some (Orange)  / Sufficient (Green).  This should ideally be evaluated over the previous 12 to 18 months - but could be longer. 

• Identify your levels of any Potential Opportunity to the selected framework item - None (Red)  / Some (Orange)  / Sufficient (Green). This should ideally be evaluated over the upcoming 12 to 18 months - but could be longer. 

• Add you Journal entry - remember to identify the specific learning and knowledge acquisition, the main challenges or problems solved, what options and solutions / why you did what you did

• After adding Journal entries, you can view them on the App or in CHQ and add additional details or start a conversation about the specific learning event with your Mentor. If you add a Conversation Note, a notification will be automatically sent to your Mentor and Manager. This App will retain a chronological record of all the Journal Conversation Notes that you or your Mentor and / or Manager ad over time.