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Learning Journal

Why do we keep a learning journal? Because learning doesn’t just happen in lectures or while coding / learning but when you pause, reflect, and turn experience into insight.

This journal is your personal lab notebook for Smart Cities: a place to capture what you tried, what happened, what you learned, and what you’ll do next.

We have seperated the Learning Journal into two parts:

  • The Smart Citiy Project learning journal
  • The Group Project learning journal

Daily updates

Updates

You are expected to update your Learning Journal daily. The reason for this are:

  • Consistency builds clarity: Short daily entries are easier than long weekly write‑ups and keep details fresh and accurate.
  • Evidence over memory: You’ll collect concrete examples of your skills and decisions as they happen.
  • Faster skill growth: Small, daily reflections help you spot patterns, fix mistakes sooner, and plan your next step.

STARRT method

In your Learning Journal project you can find a template where you use the STARRT method to write your entries.

This Learning Journal uses the STARRT method to make every entry focused and useful:

Situation

Describe the situation that you were in or the task that you needed to accomplish. You must describe a specific event or situation, not a generalized description of what you have done in the past. Be sure to give enough detail for the coach to understand. This situation must be a relevant event that took place during team collaboration. Note that these events can be positive and sometimes negative. Do not only note all positive events or only note all negative events. Give an realistic mix of events that occurred each week.

Help questions (do not copy paste these literally you are not filling in a questionnaire):

  • Describe the situation. What happened?
  • Who was involved?
  • Where did it take place?
  • What was it specifically about?

Task

What goal were you (not your team) working toward? If you want or need to discuss the team goal for context then do so under "Situation".

Help questions (do not copy paste these literally you are not filling in a questionnaire):

  • What was the task?
  • What was your role? What was your function?
  • What did you have to do?
  • What was expected of you?
  • What was your goal? What were your objectives?
  • What was your intention? Did you have a plan?

Action

Describe the actions you took to address the situation with an appropriate amount of detail and keep the focus on YOU. What specific steps did you take and what was your particular contribution? Be careful that you don't describe what the team or group did when talking about a project, but what you actually did. Use the word "I," not "we" when describing your actions. If you want or need to discuss the team actions for context then do so under "Situation".

Help questions:

  • What did you actually do?
  • How did you approach it?
  • What considerations played a role at that moment?
  • What were you thinking? What were you feeling? What did you envision?
  • What was your specific contribution or input?

Result

Describe the outcome of your actions and don't be shy about taking credit for your behavior. What happened? How did the event end? What did you accomplish? Make sure your answer also contains multiple positive results.

Help questions:

  • What was the outcome of your action for yourself and for others involved?
  • What was the impact on the atmosphere?
  • How did it influence the process? Were you able to continue working effectively? What was the impact on team performance?
  • What was the effect of your contribution (your action) on the result you wanted to achieve?

Reflection

Updates

Looking back, describe what you learned.

Help questions:

  • Was the outcome of your action what you intended to achieve?
  • Did you learn anything from it?
  • Can you relate this situation and your actions to a competency from the professional profile related to the assignment? If so, how would you rate yourself on this competency?

Transfer

Looking forward, describe how you would approach this events (or this kind of event) in the future. If you would do it all over again.

Help questions:

  • Could this situation happen again?
  • Would you want to do anything differently next time? (What, how, and why?) Or would you choose to handle it the same way? (What, how, and why?)
  • Are there situations where what you did could be applied again, or where you would avoid doing it?
  • What do you intend to do differently or the same next time?

Tips

Updates

  • Formulate a learning goal for the entry and answer the questions using the STARRT method.
  • Write while it's fresh; right after finishing a task or at day's end.
  • Be specific: prefer "I refactored the API client to use async/await and reduced response time from 480ms to 310ms" over "worked on backend."
  • Capture failures; they're often the best learning.
  • Keep it yours: this is not marketing; it's your thinking space. It shouldn't be the work of an AI.

Start today. Tomorrow's you will thank you.