Critical Reflections #1 and #2
including Professor's Comments:
Student 1 Critical Reflection #1 (Word file)
Student 2 Critical Reflection #1 (Word file)
Student 3 Critical Reflection #1 (Word file)
Student 4 Critical Reflection #1 (Word file)
Student 1 Critical Reflection #2 (Word file)
Student 2 Critical Reflection #2 (Word file)
Student Reflection Papers:
Reflections Student 1 (Word file)
Reflections Student 3 (Word file)
Reflections Student 4 (Word file)
Job Analysis Student Work including Professor's Comments:
Student 1 (Word file)
Student 2 (Word file)
Student 3 (Word file)
Student 5 revised (Word file)
Organizational Analysis Student Work including Professor's Comments:
Student 1 (Word file)
Student 2 (Word file)
Student 3 (Word file)
Grading for Presentations:
Student 1 (Word file)
Student 3 (Word file)
Student 4 (Word file)
Performance Evaluations:
Student 1 (Word file)
Student 2 (Word file)
Student 3 (Word file)
Student 4 (Word file)
Student 5 (Word file)
One project that I think was crucial was the critical reflection paper (see Critical Reflections #1 and #2 including Professor’s Comments), the first project the students did in the semester. In fact, they did it the second and third days of class. They had to report on an article (not a book chapter) and address the issues of organizational climate and diversity. This means they had to read, synthesize, and write. In previous semesters, we relied only on discussion as a way to understand the readings.
By doing this writing early in the semester, the students had to attack the course ideas. I wasn’t looking for a right or wrong answer, but I wanted to give students a chance to grapple with ideas by asking what they got out of it and how it applied to our subject matter. I saw growth in their discussions and later projects that I attribute to this early work. While I liked the learning bump that came from work on these papers, the actual reflections were not well-written papers.
A later assignment was a reflection paper (see Reflection Paper). I think they did better in their writing than students in previous semesters, although I don’t think the instructions were clear enough regarding what needed to be included. In spite of that weakness, they did okay.
When I look at student papers, I consider content and grammar, as do most teachers. In the assignment guidelines that I give students, I tell them what I will be looking for regarding grammar and the percentage for that element. I am not comfortable using a more detailed rubric, because I want flexibility when I examine the ideas that the students write about. What I gave the students were guidelines for written assignments and in-class presentations. These assignment guidelines incorporated all the ideas they used as they analyzed various components of working in an organization. I have done assignment guidelines in previous classes, and I continue to update them to fit each course.
After I did the grading, I used Blackboard to inform students about their work. I used this method with all papers for this class. On the earliest papers, I lowered the percentage in order to point out what writing issues each student needed to address. This offered students an important chance to make improvements before they had to turn in papers worth a greater percentage of their total grade.
The student group presentations addressed the second objective—the concept that provides for the development of teamwork. I liked how this project supported the framework that I created for the class. The students seemed to understand how they needed to make it work together. In intent, I was going to have the students use an entire class period for one presentation, but I made a mistake in creating the schedule and each group only had one hour instead of two. While this wasn’t a significant error, next time I plan to give each group the full class period. The students included more diversity materials than they had in the past, and I was pleased to see that.
Out of the five student group presentations, the final was the best by far. The students chose the topic of “burned out,” and they used a fire theme to link their material. What made this presentation so successful was the varied and successful methodology that they employed. For instance, they lectured, had a discussion on experiences, moved the audience to a different room in order to have experiential exercises, did self-disclosure on their own burn-out, and asked for input on application. They touched on every form of adult learning styles that we discussed in preparation for the presentations. Both the presenters and the audience were fully engaged, and this was quite an accomplishment: not only was it the end of the semester, but it was also an evening class after a full day of classes. This was the only group that received a score of 100%. They covered all that they had to do with an exemplary demonstration of learning methodology. Overall, all the class performances were better than in previous semesters: they were more engaging and used fewer lectures.
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