Electronic Journal Guidelines
Your Electronic Journal is a space in which you are expected to record regularly your engagement with the module and its themes. In the first half of the module, there is a set journal task for each week. You must fulfil these tasks, and they form the primary basis of how your journal is received in assessment. Every journal entry should include references to relevant textual and visual sources, and clear reproductions of the images discussed. You should also record research, engagement, and reflection in additional entries. So every week of the module you should write at least one entry in your journal.
Required Length: The set journal tasks must be between 300 and 500 words long, and the length of any additional entries is, naturally, up to you. However, consider your readers: it is not possible to read overly long texts, while a mere sentence or two provides very little evidence of thoughtful engagement.
Presentation: Consider the presentation of the journal carefully and follow these guidelines as a minimum to assist your readers to navigate. Any omissions of the following will result in difficulties finding your entries and thus in appropriate deductions in assessment.
Your journal must include the archive function, so select a theme that has it if you have not already done so in the first year. You must use date stamping for all entries. Again, use the appropriate settings/themes in the journal. You must tag all entries clearly, and as relevant, with the following:
5IMAG016W #AdvancedMethods #Journal Task
5IMAG016W #AdvancedMethods #Further Research
Blogs without tagging or with obscure tagging will not be accepted. All written elements in the entries must be typed. E.g., mere photographs of handwritten lecture notes will not be accepted as legitimate entries. In general, avoid replicating lecture notes in the journal and try to synthesise and explain your learning in reflective writing, and attempt to apply the relevant ideas to image analyses.
Week 1: Exploring the Image Blog task: Discuss what you learnt in class about methods. Why do we need a methodology to analyse visual images? How does such a method help us understand visual work better? Use interesting visual examples of your own to illustrate your response.
Week 2: Philosophy as Method: Ethics, Aesthetics, Ontology of Photography Blog task: Discuss what you learnt in class today: how can philosophy assist in analyzing photographs?
Week 3: Gallery Visit 1 Blog task: Write a reflection on what you saw today. Which methodology/ies could you use to analyse images from the exhibition?
Week 4: History and Theory of Art as Method Blog task: Discuss how you might use areas of the history and/or theory of art in analysing some appropriate images.
Week 5: History: Methodical Contextualisation Task: what does historical research mean and how can it change our understanding of an image?
Week 6: Gallery Visit 2 Blog task: Write a reflection on what you saw today. Which methodologies could you use to analyse images from the exhibitions?
Week 7: Reading week, no set blog task, but you are of course expected to keep blogging about module themes and your work around them.
Blog task for seminars: write a reflective passage on your own group’s presentation: think about questions such as, what went well; what would you improve; what did you learn from the process and the discussion; how will this assist you in your future work, including the essay for PDP3?
Week 8: Workshops
Week 12: Submission of electronic journal/blog
Electronic journal assessment criteria The blog will be assessed based on the following criteria
Critical engagement with taught sessions through written responses, analyses and visualisations Quality of responses to weekly tasks Reflection on seminar preparation and presentations Frequency of posts and responses Level of self-reflection and appraisal Additional relevant research undertaken
