Beyond the Learning Log Interesting, dynamic and rewarding alternatives

This may be heretical — or at least an unwise admission — but whenever I hear the words ‘learning log’ I can feel my heart starting to sink and my stomach starting to churn.

Yes, I know that the trainers’ and institutes’ actions are well-intentioned, and that keeping a learning log or journal is good for my learning and continuous professional development, but let’s face it — they’re a real pain to fill in. Now, I may be alone in these feelings but I suspect that, as many people need to be chased to complete these logs, I may not be entirely alone.

As someone who believes in the value of learning for its own sake, I also have to admit that I had pangs of conscience and guilt over these feelings. So, rather than let it go at that, I decided to analyse what was behind this intuitive reaction.

Interestingly, I discovered that the guilt was not due to having an aversion to filling in learning logs, but more to the fear that if I didn’t make a record the learning would be lost to myself and others. I also realized that the conventional learning log was not the learning itself, which made it seem less important and interesting to me. My most surprising discovery was that, without realizing it, I had been maintaining a learning log for the past four years!

I had been creating a personal web page where I had been archiving anecdotes, ice breakers and other resources that I had generated on learning and development. This act of creation was an excellent method of reinforcing my learning and the site provided a valuable reference for my colleagues and me. It not only provided a record of conscious learning but, in the background, it had also recorded what I had learnt about HTML, JavaScript and Perl.

Learning that my web site was indeed a learning record, which was organic and a direct representation of the learning itself, coincided with my attempts to learn German.

Not being put off by the thought that life is too short to learn German, I started making a set of revision notes to put on my web site. The criterion for deciding which notes should be included was simply that a topic was included if I couldn’t find the answer to one of my questions when I accessed the site. Sometimes this meant that a topic was included more than once. In this way I built up a set of notes which were constructed from the learner’s, rather than the expert’s, point of view — a record not only of the learning but also of the way in which it was learnt.

If you would like to have a look at my web site to see how using a web site as a learning log can work, you can access it through LearningPages.org. The German revision notes can be found by going to LearningPages.org/german.

Don’t run away with the idea that a web page is the only alternative to a conventional learning log. Writing a book, writing articles like this, creating a library, collecting memorabilia or keeping an archive in your attic are all ways of creating an organic learning log. I’m sure there must be many more and I would be please to hear of any other ideas that you might have.

Also see:
Learing Theory Book List
New and Used Training Books