Journal app: Is it useful to use an elegant, free and secure app for student reflection?

Journal App Challenge

Welcome — Why You’re Here

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Journal App Challenge.

I want to start by telling you that you were selected very intentionally.

There were a few things I was looking for.

First, the device is already in the hands of your learners.

That matters.

Your programs have already done something significant: you have provided students with Apple devices. Yay! We don’t have to begin by talking about acquiring technology, deploying technology, or convincing people to carry another device.

The device is already there.

Second, you were selected because you and your programs have demonstrated that you are innovators.

You’re willing to experiment. You’re willing to ask what could be better. And, importantly, you’re willing to learn from trying something—not just adopt technology for technology’s sake.

That’s exactly who we need for this challenge.

Why Reflection? Why Journaling?

The idea behind this challenge isn’t simply, “Here’s a cool Apple app. Let’s try it.”

There is a much deeper foundation.

We have decades of work around reflection, reflective practice, metacognition, and learning.

When learners stop and think about what they experienced, what surprised them, what challenged their assumptions, what they still don’t understand, and what they might do differently next time, they are doing important intellectual work.

Reflection helps move an experience from:

“Something I did”

to:

“Something I learned from.”

And that matters across disciplines.

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For a nursing student, reflection might follow a clinical experience.

For an education student, it might follow student teaching.

For a business student, it could follow a team project, presentation, or internship.

For an honors student, it might be about identity, curiosity, leadership, or a moment when their thinking changed.

The context changes.

The reflective practice does not.

The Opportunity Sitting on the Device

And this is where I think we have an extraordinary opportunity.

There is this beautiful, elegant app already available to our learners: Journal.

It doesn’t feel like another learning management system.

It doesn’t feel like another assignment portal.

It doesn’t feel institutional.

It feels personal.

And that’s important because reflection is personal.

Journal gives learners a private space for their thinking. The Journal app can be locked, and its privacy and security protections are designed so that deeply personal reflections can remain personal.

That creates a very different proposition from:

“Write a reflection and upload it so I can grade it.”

Instead, we can begin asking:

What happens when we teach students the practice of reflection—even when we don’t ask to read every word they write?

That’s a fascinating educational question.

My Challenge to You

So here’s the challenge.

Would you be willing to pilot the Journal app with your learners?

Not roll it out everywhere.

Not redesign your curriculum.

Not create 14 new assignments.

Pilot it.

Find one course.

One group of students.

One learning experience.

One moment where reflection could add value.

And then design a very simple invitation to reflect.

Maybe it’s three minutes.

Maybe it’s once a week.

Maybe it’s after a simulation, clinical experience, difficult conversation, presentation, lab, critique, or major project.

We’re not trying to prove that we have the perfect model.

We’re trying to learn.

You Are the Faculty Innovators

And I want to emphasize something else.

This challenge isn’t primarily about students learning Journal.

It’s about us learning.

I’m asking you to lean into this as faculty innovators.

Try something.

Pay attention.

Notice what works.

Notice what doesn’t.

Ask students what they think.

Consider whether reflection changes the way they think about their learning.

And give yourself permission to adjust the experiment as you go.

Because at the end of this, the most valuable outcome may not be a collection of student journal entries.

It may be a collection of faculty learning.

We Need a New Book

Some of you may remember Active Learning Near and Far.

That work captured innovations and practices from 2020, at an extraordinary moment when educators everywhere were figuring out new ways to teach and engage learners.

It was, in many ways, a recipe book.

“Here’s something we tried.”

“Here’s how we did it.”

“Here’s what we learned.”

But education has changed enormously since 2020.

Our devices have changed.

Our students have changed.

AI has changed the learning environment.

And the questions we’re asking about attention, thinking, reflection, and the role of technology have changed.

I think it’s time for a new recipe book.

And you are going to help write it.

Between Now and Thanksgiving

So between now and Thanksgiving, your assignment is not to become an expert in Journal.

Your assignment is to experiment and notice.

Think about:

What did you try?

What prompt did you use?

Where did reflection fit naturally?

What surprised you?

What did students tell you?

What would you change?

What would you recommend another faculty member try?

And perhaps most importantly: What did you learn as an educator?

Around Thanksgiving, we’re going to come back together.

And when we do, we’re going to move from individual experiments to a community of practice.

We’ll share what happened.

We’ll compare approaches.

We’ll identify patterns.

We’ll capture the successes—and the things that didn’t work.

And then we’re going to begin putting together a book of contributions: a new recipe book created by faculty innovators who actually tried these ideas with learners.

Closing Challenge

I hope you see this as more than an app challenge.

It’s really a challenge about reflection, learning, and innovation.

The technology is actually the easy part.

The device is already in their hands.

The app is already there.

The science of reflective practice gives us a reason to explore it.

And you are the innovators who can help us understand what meaningful use looks like.

So my challenge to you is simple:

Find one place where reflection could make learning better.
Try it.
Learn from it.
And bring that learning back to us.

By Thanksgiving, I don’t want us simply to be able to say, “We used Journal.”

I want us to be able to say:

“Here’s what we discovered.”

And then let’s share those discoveries so that the next faculty member doesn’t have to start from scratch.

Let’s write the next recipe book on Reflection in Higher Education: In a World of Worry about AI.