A feedback journal is an online space for students to rate their skills and use as a repository for feedback from assessments. It is used as part of meetings with academic mentors as a basis for discussion about their progress.
It is designed to encourage students to reflect on their own skills as well as get them to read, understand and act upon the feedback they receive while studying.
Dr Joanne Berry from COAH at Swansea University presented a session on her experience with feedback journals. You can access this via the SALT website.
For distance learning, this process might be valuable as students main communication with their lecturers is often written feedback from assessment. A feedback journal may be a way for them to collate the feedback, review it and discuss it with their mentors and gain more understanding of the feedback this way. It may also help academic mentors structure their discussions and encourage students to approach their lecturers.
Dr Berry also mentions that one department is using the feedback journal as an assessed piece of work and it acting as an employment skills audit. This has been done by changing some of the questions.
It is clear that feedback journals are potentially a good way to solve a number of potential problems including ensuring students engage with feedback, academic mentor meetings becoming more structured and valuable to students and give students an opportunity to self-audit their skills.