About journals and blogs

Journals and blogs can be incorporated into your teaching to provide students with opportunities for documenting and reflecting on their work, learning process, or experiences, with the potential for students to share these with their peers. In addition to text-based entries, these activities can incorporate multimedia uploads.

What’s the difference between journals and blogs?

While journals and blogs are very similar to each other in their purpose and structure, and have shared benefits such as supporting the development of writing and language skills, there are key differences between them:

• Journals typically consist of personal reflections on a process or activity such as work placement, which may be assessed as part of the subject. As the writing for a journal activity may be more informal, staff will need to scaffold the activity so students are able to work on their reflection skills. While journals are usually private and only viewed by staff, they may also be shared depending on the purpose of the activity.
• Blogs are often designed to be for public audiences and will have options to share and allow others to comment on blog posts, although it may be possible to set up as a private activity. Blogs will typically display posts in a reverse chronological order, where the most recent blog post appears at the top. Students may be assessed not only on their posts but also the comments they leave for other students.

LMS technologies to support blogs and journals

While Canvas LMS does not include a specific journal or blog tool, we can adapt existing university-supported tools to create the activities you want to make.

When reviewing the comparison table, you will need to think about the purpose and specifications of the type of blog or journal that you’d like to create, as that decision will inform the selection of tool / range of tools that are available to you.

Questions to consider

• Will the activity be a journal or a blog?
• What will students be expected to include in their entries?
• Will the activity need to be assessed?
• Will students be asked to review and comment on each other’s posts?
• How many submissions will students be expected to make?

List of tools and their use

The following table gives you a brief idea of which tools can be used for a journal or a blog activity. Activities set up using these tools can be assessed by instructors unless otherwise noted. For detailed instructions on how each tool can be configured, whether it can be used for grading, and our recommendation notes, refer to the specific tool guides creating a journal activity and creating a blog activity.

Tool	Journal	Blog
LMS Assignment	Yes	No
LMS Discussions	No	Yes, but will require set-up of sections or groups
Cadmus Assignments	Yes, but will require constant updates of deadline	No
FeedbackFruits (Discussion on Work & Discussion on Topic)	No	Yes
H5P	Yes, but requires an additional set-up of a LMS Assignment if the activity requires grading	No
PebblePad	Yes	Yes
Stackle	Yes	No

Supporting journal and blog activities

Journals and blogs are often used for reflective writing. However, it’s worth noting that they can also be used for other writing activities. The following guides provide advice and recommendations specifically on how to implement reflective activities with students:

• Reflective practice (staff guide): Provides an overview of reflective practice and different reflection models or frameworks you could use to support students in reflection
• Reflection and consolidation activities: Provides ideas and advice on setting different reflection activities and how to provide feedback to students.
• Reflective writing (Academic skills resource): This student guide can support students in reflective writing using the DIEP model.

If you would like any support with setting up a journal or blog activity, please submit a support request for assistance.