Introduction
How do we use our knowledge of our selves, our passions, our creativity and our aspirations to plot the next steps in our academic and professional lives? Through interrogatory reflection on our own work & achievements, others’ responses to them, and the contexts that inspire us we deepen understanding of our own talents and start to plan rewarding futures.
At this mid-point in the second semester of your first (for most of you) year, we therefore ask you to undertake a comprehensive reflection on your learning, both inside, and outside, of academic classes, as a joint assignment for NCLC 103 & NCLC 203. Through this reflection, you will be able to:
- understand how and why your aspirations have developed over your first year of college
- assess the viability of your current plans for your future
- investigate the avenues you might explore to achieve your goals
- identify options you might consider in the future
The Assignment
Reflection as an intellectual activity involves the examination of evidence (your work, associated commentary from faculty, peers, friends and family, and actions you have undertaken) and the drawing of conclusions about your learning from that evidence.
Thus, as you compose your reflection, using the webfolio tools in PebblePad (or the electonic composition environment of your choice), you should support your interpretations and conclusions with extracts from, and links to, the most eloquent evidence available to you. As you are reflecting within an electronic environment, you will be able to expand the genres of evidence you integrate beyond texts, from photographs and videos to music and web-based media and from your seminar leader’s feedback on your assignments to ideas that have excited you in seminar readings and beyond.
After you have concluded your reflections, create a learning Action Plan (using the Action Plan in PenbblePad) for yourself, and include it in your learning foundation webfolio. In your action plan, identify your aspirations for your future years of college, and craft goals for the rest of this semester, for the summer, and for your second year of college through which you will meet, and exceed, your aspirations.
Remember, you control this assignment. You choose the content, the flow, the media in and through which you present your work, and the conclusions you demonstrate. You decide on how much evidence is enough, and how to structure your arguments, and express your conclusions. You have experimented with multiple ways of communication and composition, and you can deploy all of them here.
Questions to Consider
As you brainstorm for this assignment, use the questions below to stimulate your ideas, especially if you encounter difficulties in launching your self-assessment:
- What are my strengths as a learner and how to they support my future goals as a student?
- Which aspects of my learning do I most need to strengthen to realize my aspirations and how will I achieve that strength?
- What are my greatest achievements thus far in college? What has most surprised me about these achievements and why?
- What are the most exciting ideas I have encountered in college and how have they influenced my plans for the future?
- Who or what has most influenced me as a college student so far, and why? What is the significance of this influence for my future learning?
- What are my most rewarding activities outside the classroom, and how do they relate to my aspirations?
- What am I learning from those activities outside the classroom that I can integrate into my academic work?
- How has my academic work influenced my activities and actions outside the classroom and how might it continue to do so?
- How and why have my aspirations changed, transformed or deepened since August 2010, and what have I learned about myself as a result?
- What do I need to know to continue on my chosen path, and how will I achieve that knowledge?
Remember…
First, NCC provides you with several frameworks, such as the competencies, the critical thinking matrix and the college learning outcomes, you can use for self-assessment. For example, you might identify competencies where you are highly engaged and fluent. You might use the critical thinking matrix to identify your strengths as a critical thinker, and organize your supporting evidence. You might use the college learning outcomes as a way to organize your evidence and structure your reflection. And so on. Finally, we have also prepared an evaluation rubric for this assignment which will aid you in your own self-assessment of your work.
Second, your faculty members are all deeply committed to your success, not simply in the classroom (although we do want you all to graduate) but in all the areas of life important to you. We will happily help you to brainstorm for this assignment, to assess your evidence, to negotiate the intricacies of reflection (and of Pebble Pad and other softwares) and read drafts of your work in progress. Do ask us, often and early, for as much support as you want or need.
Be intrepid & be creative & always remember your faculty members are there to help