Last updated: 2026-09-16

F
Fundamental / general audience

Learning Log Template

Three questions are enough to stop the blank page from being the hard part. Copy the block below into LEARNING_LOG.md, fill it in, and commit it with a message that actually says what the entry covers — the message doing that work is as much the point as the file itself, see Why Engagement Matters for why.

## YYYY-MM-DD

**Did:** What you read, tried, or ran into.

**Broke / surprised me:** What didn't go the way you expected, or what a failed attempt taught you.

**Next:** What you're going to try, read, or check because of this.

Three or four sentences per section is normal. An entry that takes longer than five minutes to write is doing more than this template asks for.

The three questions aren't arbitrary. "Broke / surprised me" is doing the work Boud, Keogh, and Walker's model of reflection asks for — returning to an experience and re-evaluating it, not just describing what happened1 — and the template's shape generally follows the practical guidance in Moon's handbook on learning journals2. See Why Engagement Matters for what the research on learning logs specifically has found, including a limit worth knowing about3 and why an occasional entry connecting the current week to your longer-term plans is worth the extra sentence4.

A worked example, across the first twelve weeks of Semester 1

learning-log-example on CSGitLab fills this template out across twelve realistic entries, one commit each, running from Welcome Week to the Christmas break. It's an illustrative example, not a real transcript of anyone's actual coursework — its own README says so directly — but the commit history and the file are both worth reading as a demonstration of what "keeping it up" looks like in practice: short, regular, and unpolished.

See also

Why Engagement Matters for the full case for keeping a log at all, including the issue-tracker alternative for anyone who prefers cards or threads to a running file. Issue Tracking for setting up a CSGitLab or GitHub repository in the first place.

References

  1. Boud, D., Keogh, R., & Walker, D. (Eds.). (1985). Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. Kogan Page. ↩

  2. Moon, J. A. (2006). Learning Journals: A Handbook for Reflective Practice and Professional Development (2nd ed.). RoutledgeFalmer. ↩

  3. Stephens, K., & Winterbottom, M. (2010). Using a learning log to support students' learning in biology lessons. Journal of Biological Education, 44(2), 72–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2010.9656197 ↩

  4. Alt, D., Raichel, N., & Naamati-Schneider, L. (2022). Higher education students' reflective journal writing and lifelong learning skills: Insights from an exploratory sequential study. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 707168. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.707168 ↩