Your reflective log is the only record of what you were thinking. Nobody can grade thinking they cannot see.
Belfast Met · Castlereagh
Start here
A reflective log is a dated record of what you did, why you made the decisions you made, and what you would do differently. You write one for every session. It takes fifteen to twenty minutes.
In June you will be assembling a portfolio out of nine months of work. You will not remember September. You will not remember why you rebuilt the logo, who gave you the feedback that changed it, or what you tried first. If it is not written down, it did not happen as far as your grade is concerned.
Students who write the log as they go finish the year with evidence. Students who leave it turn up in May trying to invent nine months of thinking in a weekend, and it reads exactly like what it is.
Assessment on this course is holistic — your assessor looks at a whole body of work and judges it against five criteria using a best-fit approach. A finished artefact proves you can make something. It does not prove you researched, weighed options, rejected one, solved a problem or learned anything. That proof lives in the log, and for several criteria the log is the only place it can live.
What? What actually happened. Facts, decisions, what you made.
So what? Why it mattered. What you learned, what it changed, what it proved or disproved.
Now what? What you will do about it, specifically enough that someone could check.
Most weak logs are all What. The grade lives in So what. The next grade up lives in Now what.
Two students, the same induction day, the same task. One log is a Pass and the other is a Distinction, and nothing about the day was different. Read both before you write your own.
Twenty minutes at the end of the session beats an hour on Sunday reconstructing it from nothing.
Not "a video I watched" — the title, the date, the link. Not "it went well" — what specifically worked.
A log with no problems in it reads as fiction and evidences nothing under AC2.
The five criteria
Every unit on this qualification is graded against the same five criteria. They carry equal weight. You need at least a Pass in every one of them, in every unit, to be awarded the qualification.
| Grade | Roughly what it means in your log |
|---|---|
| U | The criterion is not evidenced. Nothing in the log speaks to it. |
| Pass | You describe what happened, accurately, across all five criteria. |
| Merit | You explain the reasoning behind decisions and back it with concrete examples. |
| Distinction | You judge your own work against a standard, change position when evidence says you should, and set next steps someone else could check. |
Grading is compensatory across criteria — strength in one can offset weakness in another — but there is no compensating for a criterion left at Unclassified. That is why every entry touches all five, even briefly.
Two logs, one day
Both of these students were in the room from 10:00 to 16:00. Both did the Gear Zero arcade task in a group of three. Both pitched. The difference between a Pass and a Distinction here is entirely in the writing. Both logs are below in full — the Pass first, then the Distinction.
Stuck?
If you are staring at a blank page, answer one of these instead. Tap a question to drop it into the writer as a heading you can answer underneath.
Write today's entry
Fill in each criterion. Your work saves to this browser as you type, so the same machine in the same room will still have it next week. Build the entry, then copy or download it into your portfolio.
This saves to the browser on this computer only. It is a drafting tool, not your portfolio. Download the entry at the end of the session and keep it with the rest of your work.
Your entry appears here once you press Build entry.
Rewrite
Every line on the left is real, honest and worth zero marks. Tap to see the version that isn't.
Before you close the laptop
Run this over today's entry. If you cannot tick it, it is not finished.
Words you will be marked with