Why You Should Teach Your Students to Write AI Process Journals

Learn more about AI Process Journals and try out Kigumi’s automated AI Process Journal to equip your students to become AI-literate at edSummit Bangkok 2026, taking place at Bangkok Patana School 23-24 January 2026. Register now >>

What is an AI Process Journal?

An AI Process Journal is a single document (word, pdf, etc.) that learners submit to their teachers or instructors when they use one or more AI tools (including LLMs, coding agents, image generators, or other AI tools) to complete or generate an assignment or deliverable (including a research paper, essay, visual presentation, visual/art project, coding assignment, etc.). The AI Process Journal should always be submitted alongside with the original assignment or deliverable. 

The best way to think about an AI Process Journal is as a scaffold for your learners to think critically about their AI-use in specific tasks. Eventually, after a period of intensive and repetitive use of AI Process Journals, a mature AI-user will rely on the template less and less, and integrate the reflexive questions into their own thinking processes, at which point you can begin extending the Process Journal design into other PBL experiences. 

How Do I Use an AI Process Journal as a Teacher?

You should set the expectation for students that any assignment they use AI on should be automatically accompanied by an AI Process Journal when it gets submitted to you. When you receive them, you (or the instructors / graders) should read through each student’s individual Journal in parallel to their original assignment.  The idea is to read them together and have these two works be in conversation with each other, to understand how the student arrived at their end deliverable. 

Try out Kigumi’s virtual AI Process Journal for free for 2 months (unlimited number of assignments) when you sign up for one of our products before 25 January 2025:

• KiguLab, K-12 digital wellbeing e-learning platform 

• Digital Parenting Kit

• Virtual Student & Family Digital Wellbeing Diagnostic Tests

All products available in Eng, Chinese, Thai and other languages available upon request.

What is the point of an AI Process Journal?

AI Process Journals benefit both learners and teachers in both the short- and long-term.

Benefits for Learners: At their core, AI Process Journals teach AI-users of all ages (including employees, interns, secondary school students and even upper primary students) how to become responsible AI-users who have the judgment and nuance to make balanced AI decisions for the long-term. They also act as a quality control process for potential plagiarism and other issues, helping learners to catch potential mistakes or inaccuracies early, before submitting an assignment or deliverable.

Benefits for Teachers/Managers: By acting as a “worksheet” for research or other assignments, AI Process Journals can incentivise students to check their own learning process while it’s happening, and make better decisions in real-time. Journals can also allow students to review their thinking after an assignment is completed and make corrections to implement their learning next time on similar assignments.  Another benefit of AI Process Journals is that they can help to weed out potential cases of academic dishonesty, by allowing teachers to scan through and judge the level of effort a student put in.

What age is right for an AI Process Journal?

AI Process Journals are not strictly tied to grade levels, but rather to your students’ maturity and access to AI tools at school and at home. If you have students submitting assignments (in writing, presentation, art or any other subject) who are heavy or automatic users of AI but who don’t have the training to track or reflect on their use, an AI Process Journal (or a similar format) is something you should consider. Likewise, if you

Our Kigumi AI Process Journal is made for secondary school students (middle school and up) through tertiary level (university).

Where can I find or make an AI Process Journal?

Many dedicated teachers in high-resource schools already have made their own AI Process Journals for the students and grades they serve. If you have a digital literacy lead, instructional tech coach, or any colleague who is very motivated and a pro-AI early adopter, ask them first if they’ve created anything that they’re willing to share with you that you can adapt for your own kids. 

What we find is that:

• Adapting or customising your own template can be the best option if you have a low student:teacher ratio in your secondary school, if your school has a clearly communicated and consistent AI use policy and rubric (or you have one for your own classroom) and if your teachers already have the confidence and literacy to create and adapt the AI use policy and rubric into specific academic areas. Custom templates also work best if you, the teacher, have a work structure that enables you to take the time to spend reading through each student’s individual Journal response in parallel to their assignment (since the idea is to read them together, or in conversation with each other, to understand how the student arrived at their end deliverable).

• Using a pre-built template can be the best option if you don’t have the time everyday to manually read through each student’s Journal. If you have a student:teacher ratio that requires you to prioritise which kids to help first, using an automated template like Kigumi’s may help you to quickly scan which Journals need the most attention first (i.e. which are “higher risk” for AI misuse versus “medium” or “low risk”) and quickly keep tabs on which students are in positions to teach others while you work with the high-need students. An automated template also makes it less of a chore to students, meaning easier buy-in from them. Finally, an automated template can save you grading time by highlighting salient features or areas for improvement for each student to work on, including automatic “action items” suggested to scaffold each student’s personalised need. 

• Think about the quality of the rubric and research that the AI Process Journal template is based on, since your grading and judgment of high, medium and low risk will be influenced by the rubric. If you’re creating your own template, do your research to make sure the rubric or learning progression you’re basing it off of is something you can stand behind and feel comfortable implementing with your students. Kigumi’s AI Process Journal and teacher dashboard are based on our AI Quotient Framework for AI literacy, developed with academic advisors in computer science, linguistics and AI ethics from the University of Chicago, UC Berkeley, and other institutions.