Student journal

[a_j_williams]

Hello. What is the best way in Canvas to set up an online diary/journal function, visible only to an individual student and to me? I've used this in a different VLE for reflective practice and to offer individual support to students. Thanks for your help.

[rmurchshafer]

Alison,

One way I've seen this done is through the use of Groups.  Create a group set and within it a group for each student so that only that one student is in the group.  From there you can create a Group discussion set to use that Discussion group and it will be private only to the student and teachers.  With Groups it will actually create a group space with more than just discussions.  So instead you could have students use Pages or even announcements within that group as a way to privately journal.  Here are a few links to get you started.

How do I add a group set in a course?  

How do I manually create groups in a group set?  

How do I manually assign students to groups?  

How do I view content and student activity within a group as an instructor?  

https://community.canvaslms.com/docs/DOC-13039-415264224 

Rick

[a_j_williams]

Thank you so much for this advice, Rick.

[KristinL]

In addition to the awesome links, this video is really helpful to understand journals in Canvas:

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[a_j_williams]

Thank you, Kristin. That's really helpful.

[CAEP]

Rick and Kristin, thank you for this info! I do have a few questions regarding the journals. I've created individual groups for every student in my class, and they have started a discussion with their first journal entry. They will be doing multiple entries through the week, but I won't be grading all of them just reading, commenting, marking as complete (I hope I can do this...) and then I'm grading the entire journal at the end of the term. Right now, I can't tell if a student has done an entry without going through the whole process of clicking on people, the group set, the group, and Discussion.  Any way to streamline this process?  And any way to do a check mark for completion without creating an assignment for every single journal entry? That would be 45 columns in the grade center... 😕 Thank you in advance!!