Year in Industry Student Handbook 2025-26

The learning journal on QMPlus will not be part of the assessment but you're highly encouraged to keep one. You will have your own private blog section on this QMPlus page when you start your placement. You will receive a comment on each post within two weeks from posting.  

The purpose of your learning journal is to:

1. Help you keep track of your progress while you are on placement;
2. Serve as a reminder of what you’ve achieved and what challenges you have overcome;
3. Help you to identify strengths and weaknesses and areas for development;
4. Assist you with writing your placement report and describing your professional and personal development

For a learning journal to be useful it needs to be updated regularly and it is recommended that you update your journal every fortnight. You should start your journal within the first two weeks of your placement and keep it updated until a week or so before the report deadline. When you come to write your journal entries it may help to ask yourself some of the following questions:

• What work tasks or work-related activities did you undertake or take part in this week (these might include: independent work tasks, attendance at meetings, client liaison, and so on)?
• What do you consider to be your main achievements this week?
• Are there any areas of your performance that you are less pleased about? If so, what might you do to improve these?
• How well are you meeting any targets you have set yourself or been set by your employer?
• What problems or obstacles did you encounter this week and how did you/or how are you planning to, overcome these?
• What was the outcome of the work you have undertaken this week (has there been any impact from what you have done)?
• What feedback have you received from others (from your supervisor, your team, your clients)?
• How have you used this feedback?
• Have there been any opportunities to apply the learning from your degree to your workplace? If so, how?
• What would you say are the key things you have learned this week (these could be specific skills; an insight into your personal strengths or weaknesses; about working with others; about the business itself, and so on)?
• Is there anything you would do differently if you were to do it again? If so, what and how?
•  Has something that you learned in a previous week had an impact on how you approached a task/situation this week? How?
• Is there anything that you’ve learned from this week that you would like to follow up in the coming week?

The length of each journal entry is likely to vary throughout the year as you will probably find you have more to write about in some weeks than others. What is most important is that each entry is reflective rather than simply descriptive.