Information Technology Internship Four Semesters: CSC 2001 CSC 2002 CSC 2003 CSC 2004 Main | Journals | Evaluations

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL

Your internship is a credit-bearing course which receives an academic grade based on several components. One of these components is the Reflective Journal, intended to ensure that the knowledge you gain during the internship is part of a purposeful pursuit.

Content, Length, and Frequency

You should journal after each day that you work on the internship , as soon as possible after the end of your shift, while the experience is still fresh in your mind. Consider the following questions as writing prompts for each entry:

• What did I do today?
• What did I learn?

In this way, your journal becomes the parallel of lecture notes – a record of your learning experience. Answers to these questions are expected to be more than a single sentence, and should also go beyond stating just the facts of the situation. For example:

• Was there something that surprised you?
• Was there something you thought was particularly interesting? Satisfying? Frustrating?
• Do you have observations that include the entire experience so far? (This is a useful question to ask when you have a "slow" week)

Journal entries must be in a typed document of a format readable by your professor. (In other words: Word, GoogleDocs, OpenOffice – keep it something relatively mainstream.) A reasonable expectation is that each entry should be at minimum one half of a page, single-spaced, with sensible margins and font size, for a total of one page a week.

Submitting Your Journal Entries

Journal entries are due every week on Monday, starting the Monday after your first shift, at 12pm noon. Attach the document as a submission to the link available from the Blackboard site for the internship.

Evaluation of Your Journal

Each week’s journal submission will be graded using the following criteria: length, reflective content, and good writing and communication practices (grammar, spelling, etc). The grade for each entry will be one of the following:

• Excellent (100%) - - - - Late submissions will not receive full credit.
• Sufficient (85%)
• Insufficient (65%)
• Not submitted (0)

The grades will be viewable on the Blackboard page for the internship, and feedback for each entry will be emailed to you.