Why should I fill in my Apprenticeship Journals? And with what?

The journals serve numerous purposes:

Benefits to you

Your apprenticeship is a journey, your journal tracks your journey and development. Eight to Twelve months in to your programme your skill set will be different and you will have enhanced responsibilities and certifications than you will have had on day one. Your journal is a central repository for some of your evidence, if you add in what you have done and learned at work with screen captures and documents, it’s easier to look and go back in time to pull this information out from one place to use in your project write ups. Because you'll have a narrative and evidence there already, it will save you time going back through emails, tickets and code from months prior when you come to write up your project.

You can use this journal to see how far and how well you have done so far, and also remind yourself what you have learned, this is useful as you could use this content to enhance your CV and potentially negotiate a pay rise with your manager in your annual performance review.

Mandatory

Additionally as part of the apprenticeship, you need to show evidence of your continual learning and progression and this is mandatory part of the apprenticeship. This is to satisfy the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) eligibility criteria for funding and that:

• You're an apprentice who is actively learning new skills
• That the money (funding) they have secured and allocated for your training has been used effectively and you have been learning new skills and developing your knowledge required to perform your job role throughout the programme.

You'll need to account for and evidence 20% (minimum) “off job training”. The journal and timesheets are a perfect and simple for you to log this time.

Journals need to be populated weekly and timely in the current month of learning.

What to add in

Common problems with journals are that the entries are brief, and show what was done at work, as opposed to what was learned. What was “done” doesn’t show anyone reading what you have “learned”. Some terminology changes and the addition of some finer details would make this an easy task.

Example 1

“Today I edited some images for a customer website”

Example 2

“Today I learned how to take a stock image and crop it to the customers correct size for a customer website. I had to use Photoshop’s cropping tool to get the resolution to the correct size. This is going to be a useful skill as I will be able to take any give image and be able to amend it straight away without waiting for someone to help me. I had to use image dimensions and calculations in the tool to get the image to be the right size. First, I had to spend 30 minutes researching several websites on how to do it. ”

Example 2 shows explicit learning, a better idea of what you did, and also provides evidence of use of Maths in the workplace and some evidence that you can refer back to later on. The text in bold is evidence of Off The Job training.

In Example 2, the individual has met the following:

• Off the job training (reference to research)
• Evidence of learning (today I learned…)
• Evidence and narrative to assist with future project write up (the entry)
• An example /Evidence to show you mentor how you have progressed for a potential pay rise
• Compliance for the ESFA funding rules.
• Use of Maths in the workplace (reference to using dimensions and calculations-although not needed in an OJT entry)

Your Learning Mentor would want one of these entries every day, or a substantial amount to cover a week period. You do not have to evidence learning, Off-The Job learning etc. in every daily entry, just within that week period and current month of learning.

Example 3

• 01/05/18 Today I was at Wyboston Training centre on my Sec+ training course. I learned all about Threats, Attacks and Vulnerabilities Technologies and Tools and Architecture and Design, identify and troubleshoot issues and physical security controls This will help me look at different types of attacks at work and identify them and have the knowledge to implement some solutions
• 02/05/2018 Today I was at Wyboston Training centre on my Sec+ training course. I learned Identity and Access Management Risk Management. This will help me at work as regards that now, Given a scenario, I can implement identity and access management controls
• 03/05/2018 Today I was at Wyboston Training centre on my Sec+ training course. I learned Cryptography and PKI. This will help me at work as regards that now I am able to explain cryptography algorithms and their basic characteristics and implement this at work. This week I used Math’s in my training course as I learned about algorithms