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Student Evaluation: A Detailed Look at the Course Assignments
To receive credit for PSYC 441, you must complete all of
the following course assignments:
Check-ins (expected) Check-ins are
opportunities for you to discuss your coursework with your
tutor. This activity is particularly important in a course such
as this one where much of the coursework and preparation is
left up to you. It is expected that, as your own best
self-directed learner, you will call, e-mail, or fax your tutor
when you desire assistance. While there is no grade associated
with the check-in component of this course, there is an
expectation that you will make several contacts. The frequency
and duration of these contacts will be left largely up to
you.
Chronological Record
(expected) In many
ways, this record will resemble your personal resume. The
chronological record is a summary of all the personal
experiences that you feel are relevant to the program or the
courses that you wish to petition for credit, that is, to
demonstrate your equivalent learning in these areas.
The chronological record is the catalogue of the things you
have done that are related to career development, and it
provides a detailed account of when and where you did them. It
is assumed that this important learning, which you will
ultimately present in your mini-portfolio, is based upon your
own experiences.
But how do you determine which experiences you should
include for assessment in the chronological record? When
deciding what to include, there are two sets of considerations
that you should make. First, you must consider your personal
competencies as they relate directly to a set of learning
outcomes for the imaginary course in career development, which
you are going to create retrospectively. That means that it is
helpful if your competencies are clustered around a theme or a
particular area of career development. Diverse experiences,
with little in the way of a direct connection to a specific
outcome, will be much harder to form into a coherent
"course."
Second, if you feel that you have a significant amount of
experiential learning, then you may want to take care that you
include here only the amount of learning that you believe would
be equivalent to the amount contained in a one-semester or
three-credit course. You may want to enrol in
PSYC 442:
Experiential Learning and Reflective Practice in Career Development 2 to
earn another three credits, or based on your experience in this
course (PSYC 441), you may wish to challenge
PSYC 442.
Most people find it useful to begin their chronological
record by listing their personal experiences, beginning with
their current situation and then moving backward, year by year,
until they have included all of the experiences that they feel
would be relevant to the career development course they are
developing. Keep in mind that, in this course, credit will be
assessed on the basis of your learning, that
is on the knowledge, skills, beliefs, and values that you have
acquired in career development, not on the experiences
themselves.
You may choose to organize your chronological record as
illustrated in Figure 1 or by using an equivalent method. This
type of chronological reporting will help both you and your
tutor to distinguish between what you did and what you
learned.
Figure 1. Sample Chronological Record
| When and Where I was (My experience) |
What I did there (Description of my tasks, activities, etc.) |
| 1988-present Home/Hospital |
Assisted in developing a rehabilitation program for our
child, who suffers from a learning disorder. |
| 1984-1987 Alberta Social Services |
Senior Officer; promoted and delivered social services
to inner-city, unemployed persons. |
| 1979-1983 Home/Visits |
Visited the following counselling centers: Riverbend
Counselling Service, Jackpine Vocational Center, Rocky Mountain
Counselling Center, etc. |
| etc. |
|
When you have completed your chronological record, you may
want to check in with your course tutor to discuss your report.
Personal Narrative (graded
pass/fail)
This assignment builds on the chronological record above. It
is designed to allow you to describe more fully the experiences
youhave had that may fall outside of formal coursework in the
field of career development. This narrative is an outline of
your personal history of career development activities. You can
refer to your chronological record in the personal narrative if
it helps you to explain what it is you have done.
Your personal narrative should describe the roles you played
while you were engaged in your various career development
activities. It should explain the settings in which these
activities took place and the significant people who were
present at that time. Presumably, the roles, activities,
settings, and people you choose to describe in this narrative
will all be related, in some way, to career
development. Briefly explain the areas or subfield(s) of career
development that are related to your experiences as outlined
above.
Your personal narrative should run approximately 600 to
1,000 words or three to five typewritten pages (double spaced
and on one side of the paper). When you have completed this
activity, submit it to your tutor for evaluation. Remember to
make a copy of your work and to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise
form along with your completed assignment.
Goals Paper: Personal, career, and
educational goals (graded pass/fail)
As someone familiar with career development, this exercise
will be an obvious one for you. Briefly describe your personal,
career, and educational goals by stating where you have been
and where you intend to go. Explain how this particular course
relates to these goals. This portrayal will provide a context
for the assessment of your learning.
Your goals paper should be no more than 200 to 400 words
(one or two typewritten pages). When you have completed this
activity, submit it to your tutor for evaluation. Remember to
make a copy of your work and to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise
form along with your completed assignment.
Competence Area Outline:
Identifying your learning (graded pass/fail)
This assignment is usually the most difficult stage in the
development of the mini-portfolio. Here you must extract what
you have learned from the experiences you described in your
chronological record and in your personal narrative. You must
try to describe your learning in a competence-based format, or
as specific learning outcomes, which would parallel the format
of learning outcomes presented in other courses in this
program.
This outline and identification of your learning forms the
heart of your mini-portfolio. It specifies what you already
know and describes what you are able to do with that
knowledge. By this point, you should have identified the
experiences in your chronological record upon which your
learning was based. Go back to those experiences, and using a
competence-based format, identify the learning that resulted
from those experiences. At this juncture it may be difficult to
specify exact "learning outcomes," but that is the
goal here.
Once you have identified and described your learning in a
number of competence statements, try to state your learning
outcomes in a manner similar to the learning outcomes you may
have seen presented in other Career Development
courses. Remember that you are inventing a set of learning
outcomes for an "imaginary course." If the learning
you have derived from your personal experiences does not
cluster easily into something that could be described as a
course, then try to arrange your learning loosely around
certain themes as best you can. This assignment is an inductive
exercise, and you may have to try several different ways of
describing what you have learned before the clustering will
help explain the relevance, nature, and level
of your learning to an evaluator.
To help you organize this assignment (and the corresponding
segment of your mini-portfolio), we suggest that you use the
Competence Worksheet illustrated in Figure 2. If you feel you
require further assistance with this activity, do not hesitate
to contact your tutor.
Figure 2. Competence Worksheet
| Description of Experience |
Learning from Experience |
Learning Outcomes (course competences) |
Supporting Documentation of Prior Learning |
| Workshop assistant and then workshop leader for Family Life
Education Council of Wildhaven (1990-1993): Topics presented:
Communication in Families, Family Problem Solving |
Used Carkoff's communication model and learned the levels and
ratings |
Identify, explain, and demonstrate specific communication
techniques |
Analysis of an interview using Carkoff's systemAnnotated
bibliography of communication theory Evaluations of workshops
by participants and by Director Certificate of training in 3
Carkoff workshops Report on self-help within the family |
| as above |
The client is ultimately responsibleSelf-help philosophy |
Explain the concept of the counsellor "freeing" the
client |
Essay |
The Competence Worksheet
The Competence Worksheet is a map of your experience and
learning.It presents an overview of the major competencies,
which form the heart of your mini-portfolio. Not only does this
worksheet provide a useful summary, it also shows the
relationship between the various worksheet components. However,
because of the limitations of this type of document, it may be
necessary for you to footnote the entries you makeon this
worksheet to areas in your portfolio where you provide more
extensive explanations.
Column 1: Description of Experience (What did you
do?) Based on your chronological record, pick out and
describe a specific learning experience. It may be easier for
you to make a reference to your chronological record rather
than repeat it all again in this column. In this case, include
a few descriptive words in Column 1 (e.g., crisis line work)
and make a brief reference to your chronological record. These
descriptions will be of great help to your evaluator. Be
certain that you carefully distinguish between the description
of your experience and the learning you
acquired from it. Column 1 should be reserved for describing
your experience only.
In describing your learning experience, and where it is
relevant, you should indicate
where that experience took place.
when that experience occurred and how long it lasted.
your job title at that time.
your job responsibilities at that time.
the number of people you supervised (if you were in a
supervisory role).
a description of any seminars and/or workshops you
attended.
the titles and authors of any books and/or articles
you helped prepare or publish.
a brief description of any experience that would help
an evaluator to gain a better understanding of the
circumstances of your learning.
Column 2: Learning from Experience (What did you
learn?) As briefly and as clearly as possible, describe
the learning you achieved from each experience. This learning
should relate directly to career development. You will be able
to elaborate on what you learned whenyou describe the specific
learning outcomes.
Try to maintain the distinction between what you have
learned and the product of that learning. For example, there is
nothing wrong with indicating that you received an outstanding
service award from the Career Development Association of
Alberta and that you were an invited speaker at their annual
conference. However, for our assessment purposes, what is more
important is the knowledge you have and the competence you
possess that led to this recognition. To help you to determine
your knowledge and competencies, try asking yourself this
question: What knowledge and skills would I identify as being
important if I had to teach others how to be successful in this
particular area?
Column 3: Learning Outcomes (What do you know?) In
this column you identify the learning outcomes of the
"course" by placing each learning outcome adjacent to
the particular experience and learning with which you associate
it. (The "Learning Outcomes" section of this Manual
should help you to organize your descriptions of these learning
area competencies.)
Column 4: Supporting Documentation of Prior
Learning The supporting documentation for your
mini-portfolio will come mainly from your essay explanations of
the learning you achieved under each of the learning outcomes.
If you have other useful supporting documents such as final
reports, newspaper clippings, interviews, audiotapes, or
videotapes, you can mention these items here, reference them in
your explanation, and include them as part of an appendix to
your mini-portfolio.
In summary, use the following four steps to complete your
Competence Worksheet:
| Step 1. |
Identify and describe the experience(s) that relate to the
learning outcomes of your "course." (Refer to your
chronological record.) Describe what you did. |
| Step 2. |
Briefly describe what you learned from each experience. |
| Step 3. |
Based on what you know, identify the major learning outcomes of
your "course." |
| Step. 4 |
Document your learning in the learning outcomes essay. |
When you have completed the Competence Worksheet, submit it
to your tutor for evaluation. Remember to make a copy of your
work and to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise form along with
your completed assignment.
Learning Outcomes Statements
(graded pass/fail)
Learning outcomes are the observable achievements of
learning that can be recognized by others. As a career
development practitioner, you may find it useful to think of
your learning outcomes as a kind of currency that can be used
as a medium of exchange in the land of academia. It is
difficult for academics to know what you have learned if this
medium of exchange, which we call learning outcomes, is not
available. The purpose of these learning outcomes is to
communicate what has been learned at a level detailed enough to
be meaningful.
In this assignment, your task is to distil the essential
competencies of your "course" into a set of eight to
twelve learning outcome statements in a format similar to the
one suggested in the examples provided below. These statements
will indicate the attributes or skills that a graduate
(yourself) of your "course" would have. Learning
outcome statements are descriptive of the "course" as
a whole. If you have any doubts about the composition of your
learning outcomes statements, discuss them with your tutor.
Examples of Learning Outcomes Statements
Pattern your learning outcomes statements on the ones that
appear in the PSYC 441 Student Manual and Study Guide
as well as on the examples provided below. Note that each
statement of learning outcome contains the following
features:
The level of generality is more specific than in the
goal statements for a course, but the level is not as specific
as in the study questions or the learning objectives for a
particular unit in a course.
Each statement contains an action verb, such
as "define" or "describe," that
clearly states what the individual can do with the
knowledge or skills learned.
Each learning outcome statement indicates a cluster
or domain of knowledge, skills, or assumptions. Try not
to cram several clusters or domains into one learning
outcome statement.
Example #1: Learning Outcomes Statements
Learning outcomes are the sets of tasks that someone who
passes a course would be expected to accomplish. The following
list of learning outcomes has been taken from
Psychology 488:
Introduction to the Process of Counselling. These
statements specify what this particular course is designed to
teach. Thus, students who successfully complete
Psychology 488
should be able to
Define counselling, and illustrate what is meant by
each of the key concepts in the definition.
Describe professional and ethical issues that
counsellors face.
Illustrate the differences between the
"medical" model and the
"anti-illness" model of counselling.
Describe the relationship between philosophy, theory,
and practice in counselling.
Explain some of the main elements of one's own
"world-view," and relate those to preferences
for particular counselling approaches.
Discuss the personal and professional qualities that
contribute to counsellor effectiveness.
State the guidelines for maintaining a facilitative
counselling relationship.
Describe the general phases of the counselling
process, and use a problem to illustrate how they
work.
Illustrate how cultural sensitivity and the notion of
"world-view" can affect the counselling
process.
Explain the concept of the counsellor
"freeing" the client.
Discuss how the process of counselling is influenced
by the client.
Identify, explain, and demonstrate specific
communication techniques used in counselling.
Counselling can be used with many kinds of people
(e.g., young children, adolescents, adults, racial
minorities) with various kinds of problems (e.g.,
vocational dilemmas, coping with marital breakdown,
suicide prevention) in very different settings (e.g.,
clinic, prison, school, community). Examine two specific
counselling applications, and in each case, explain the
kind of client involved; the nature of the problems
faced; the special characteristics of the setting; and
the major theoretical roots, operating principles, and
techniques that contribute to the counselling
process.
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Example #2: Learning Outcomes Statements
Learning outcomes are a set of competencies that specify
what the course has been designed to teach, and what someone who
passes Psychology 401: Learning Through Life should be
able to do. Thus, by the end of this course, students should be
able to accomplish the following learning outcomes:
Define meaning perspectives and meaning schemes, and
compare these terms to similar terms used by other
authors.
Describe the role of meaning perspectives and meaning
schemes.
Describe the place of language in meaning
perspectives and meaning schemes.
Discuss the contribution of Habermas's theory of
communicative competence to Mezirow's theory of adult
learning. Include in the discussion instrumental,
communicative, and emancipatory learning.
Outline four forms of adult learning based on meaning
perspectives and meaning schemes.
Describe the role and importance of reflective learning
according to Mezirow.
Define content, process, and premise reflection by
giving concrete examples of each.
Explain a range of distortions, including their
origins that may lead to dysfunctional meaning
perspectives in adult life.
Describe the development of meaning perspectives and
factors that facilitate such development.
Outline at least six major philosophical and ethical
considerations when fostering transformative adult
education.
Analyse the development and change of meaning
perspectives and meaning schemes when given a case
study.
Analyse the development and change of meaning
perspectives and meaning schemes using a case study from
your own life experience, such as your work situation;
your community volunteer activities; or your hobbies,
travel, and personal study.
Evaluate the usefulness and limitations of Mezirow's
analysis of the creation of meaning with particular
reference to your case study above.
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When you have completed this activity, submit it to your
tutor for evaluation. Remember to make a copy of your work and
to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise form along with your
completed assignment.
Learning Outcomes Essay and Related
Documentation (graded pass/fail)
For each learning outcome stated you will be expected to
demonstrate or explain what you learned, justify your
observations, and relate this learning to career
development. This assignment is designed to give you an
opportunity to demonstrate, through written explanation or
other forms of documentation, that you did indeed learn what
you have claimed. If you have some other means (other than a
written explanation) of proving or documenting your statements
of learning outcomes, then you can include that item(s) here as
well. For instance, you may have an audiotape or videotape of
yourself interviewing a client, a special handbook you
produced, detailed job descriptions of positions you have held,
relevant letters of attestation, an evaluation of a program you
designed, or some other evidence of your having achieved a
stated learning outcome.
For each of your stated learning outcomes that remains
undocumented (or poorly documented) by some form of external
evidence, you must provide a short (two to three paragraphs)
description of how you acquired this learning and, more
importantly, explain how this learning is related to the theory
and practice of career development. This assignment is critical
to your documentation for credit in this course. If it takes
you more than two or three paragraphs to provide a full
explanation of each learning outcome, then write them.
The length of this essay assignment will depend on the
number of learning outcomes you have specified and the amount
of written explanation that each requires. If you need any
further clarification of this assignment, please contact your
tutor. You may also want to review the "Tips on Writing
Essays" section of this Manual. When you have completed
the activity, submit your essay and related documentation to
your tutor for evaluation. Remember to make a copy of your
essay and to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise form along with
your completed assignment. Please do not send your original
"related" documents. Make copies of these items and
attach them to your essay.
Course Description and Justification (graded
pass/fail)
At this point in the development of your mini-portfolio, you
are ready to prepare a refined "course"
description. You should now have before you the learning
outcomes on which to base your course description.
A course description is a summarized version of the learning
outcomes essay. It both condenses and incorporates the stated
learning outcomes. Your course description should capture the
essence of the experiential learning you are describing in
PSYC 441. In this assignment you must condense your
total learning into a couple of brief paragraphs suitable for
inclusion in an academic calendar. Your course description
should be no longer than one page (200 words), and should
summarize the learning you have achieved. For examples of
course descriptions, refer to the Athabasca University (or
other university) Calendar.
In addition to the above course description, you must also
explain and justify why your "course" would be a
legitimate component in a traditional program of study in
Career Development. Your justification should be no this
activity, submit both parts of this assignment to your tutor
for evaluation. Remember to make a copy of your work and to
enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise form along with your completed
assignment.
Compiling the Mini-portfolio
(graded pass/fail)
This assignment is the final stage in the production of your
mini-portfolio, and it consists of assembling the pieces of
your previous assignments into a single document package. Your
completed mini-portfolio assignment will attest to the learning
that you have claimed and summarize the evidence that you have
provided to substantiate your claims for learning.
We refer to this document as a "mini-portfolio,"
as opposed to the "portfolio method," which is often
used in Prior Learning Assessment. The mini-portfolio focuses
exclusively on one area--career development--and it is
restricted to one set of learning outcomes, which in this case
is representative of a single three-credit course. The
portfolio method used in Prior Learning Assessment is more much
more than three credits.
Components of Your Mini-portfolio
Your mini-portfolio must contain the following components:
A Cover Page that includes your name and student
ID number
Your Personal Narrative
Your Goals Paper, which includes your personal,
educational, and career goals
Your Competence Area Outline
Your Learning Outcomes Statements
Your Learning Outcomes Essay and Related Documentation
Your Course Description and Justification
When you have completed this activity, submit all parts of
this assignment to your tutor for evaluation. Remember to make
a copy of your work and to enclose a Tutor-marked Exercise form
along with your completed assignment. Please do not send your
original "related" documents. Make copies of these
items before you attach them to your assignment.
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