course diaries: some guidelines

for courses taught by Dr Helena Sheehan

School of Communications
Dublin City University

  This journal should be a record of your intellectual development during this course / module.

It should be written in the first person in your own authentic voice.

It should be both descriptive and analytical.

It should be a narrative of the course as a process, not just a series of essays on the subject matter of the course.  Be vivid.  Make it a story.  The course is happening to you in a time and place and not in a self-enclosed loop of pure ideas.  Set the scene.  Make the characters live (yourself, your classmates, your teachers, anyone from the wider world relevant to the story).

You should say in the beginning why you have chosen to take this module and what your initial impressions and expectations of it were.  In the end, you should address this again and state if it met your expectations or if your expectations changed.  You should sum up the experience of the course,  state what you have learned and how your ideas have changed or developed.

Each week you should give a brief summary of the lecture.  You should not just give a detached report of what the lecturer said, but what (if anything) struck you about it and why.  You should bring your own experiences and your own reflections to bear upon the topic.

You might also note what your classmates had to say, either in class or in your discussions with them outside it.  If you find that this module relates to what you have done or are doing in other modules, say so and explore the convergences.

Each week you should also write of the other formal elements of the course: seminars, reading, use of the course website, video / multimedia presentations.  You should read something substantial relevant to the subject of the lecture every week.

You could also include informal activities which bear upon the subject matter of the course: reading the newspaper, watching television, talking in a pub, thinking while standing in a bus queue . . . living your life.  Be anecdotal , be ironic, be funny, be serious, be argumentative, be profound.

Whatever you do, be interesting.  Don't be boring.  Choose life.

Be clear about what you take from books, lectures, web pages, videos or whatever.  Cite your sources.  Do not put forward other people's conclusions as your own. If you consult diaries of last year's class on the web, say so.

Don't plagiarise. Don't be derivative.  Don't give me back my own lectures as if my take on the subject is automatically your own or the common sense of the age.  What I say is me, speaking in my own voice, out of my life, my reading, my research, my reflection.  Make what you say you, speaking in your own voice, out of your own life, your own work.  Be as original as you can.  Think for yourself.  If you do agree with me, say why.  If you don't, say why not.

Be disciplined.  Learn how to edit yourself, how to filter your own experiences and ideas into a shape that is meaningful and interesting to others as well as to yourself.  Use your experience to shed light on common experiences.  Shine a light on the subject matter.  Don't add to the darkness.  Bring clarity and order to the topic.  Don't add to the clutter and chaos.

This does not mean that you cannot admit to uncertainty.

Have a sense a proportion.  Judge what is important, how and why.  Let  this determine the shape of your text.

Use your weekly diary as the first draft for what you submit.  Write it every week. Do not leave it to the day before the deadline for submission. Allow time to edit, word process, proof read and virus check the version you submit for your mark.  Don't let yourself down by flawed logic, factual error, flabby writing or careless spelling, grammar, punctuation. Points will be deducted for all such flaws. Please make all common nouns lower case and use apostrophes correctly.

Diaries should be uploaded to moodle as single word documents on the day due. The file should be named surnamefirstname.doc.  Please include at the top of the first page your name, student #, class (MTV, JR2 or CS2). If you are an exchange student, specify if you are CSX or JRX and also give the name of your home university.

Late submission will be penalised according to school of communications policy.

http://www.comms.dcu.ie/handbook/
 

 Your mark and comments on your work will be posted to you on moodle within 3 weeks.

Diaries need not be of equal length each week, but should typically be 500 to 600 words per week.  You may have more to say about some topics and some weeks than others, although you should have something to say about every major topic and give some account of every week. If you are absent due to illness or whatever, say so.  You must still address the topic of that week in an appropriate manner.

Diaries will be marked as rigorously as any essay or exam paper.

You should have in the end something of which you can  be proud, something which has stimulated you to think, something which  has contributed to your intellectual development, something which will  be interesting for someone else to read, something which will be interesting for you to find again and read in future years.

Do it.
Do it well.

Course websites  (along with some previous course diaries) :