This page has the following learning goals:

to disseminate the career-ready activities and assignments that have become part of Connected Learning at Lasell
to share and develop new approaches to career readiness (e.g., assignments, language, activities, etc.)
to integrate more fully all eight NACE competencies, but especially the following four:
- Teamwork (which maps nicely onto Lasell's Civic & Community Engagement outcome)
- Equity & Inclusion (which maps nicely onto Lasell's Intercultural Knowledge & Effectiveness outcome)
- Professionalism (which maps nicely onto Lasell's Moral & Ethical Reasoning outcome)
- Career & Self-Development (aka lifelong learning)

Watch the video below to review the career readiness activities from the most recent Davis-sponsored workshop. Several Lasell faculty describe career-ready assignments and activities that they have used recently. In an attempt to parallel how a student might move through the curriculum, the presenters went in the following order:

first-year experiences
sophomore Knowledge Perspective experiences
upper-level major-specific experiences.

TRANSCRIPT from RECORDING:

Deborah Mael

I am good to go.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

it's all yours.

Deborah Mael

Okay, hi! Thank you so much. My main concern here is that I share correctly, so let me just make sure I could do that.

OK; this is an assignment that I used in my FYS class this semester and. Well, I can just tell you a little bit about it. So the course was Gothic and horror literature. So it was very difficult to think about how am I going to get career stuff in there, but I decided to spend some days specifically designated for the career competencies and the work that we were doing about connectedness.

And so the goal of this particular activity, the student focus goals, was to introduce students to the NACE career competencies to create awareness of the connections. between curricular and co-curricular career preparedness because I really wanted them to understand that everything that they do on campus provides them with an opportunity for learning, and that they are building those skills -- everything has a hidden curriculum and an explicit curriculum -- and I wanted them to see those connections. And then to have them think about a common language with which to talk about the skills that they were developing, so that not only could they think about that common language as they approach all of their different courses, but they could also use that language when they are interviewing for whether it's internships or summer jobs or jobs later on down in their field and then to help students think about their experiences in behavioral terms. You can see, I gave myself little emojis here to show you how successful I thought we were at the students reaching those goals. And the first one was pretty good. The second was good. Eh, sort of "meh" on on the second one, and the last one...it was still difficult. I have some ideas of how I'm going to get them to do that, but what I really wanted them to see was when they went out on a job interview and somebody asked him a question about how did they demonstrate their skills, they could actually think about a project that they did in their classrooms that said, "Well, for this project, I did this, and in order to do that, I had to use this and this piece of work together."

And we didn't quite get to that point, even though we practiced some of that, and then the last thing that was an instructor focused skill, and anybody who teaches, oftentimes in the liberal arts in general, but certainly in writing and math, you certainly will understand this one. To give myself a soapbox from which to preach the importance of all courses and student's career development, particularly writing and math, it's a hard sell sometimes why this is relevant to everything that they do. So, I thought I was really...I had the soapbox. Whether they heard or not, is another thing.

OK, so here's the here's the activity that I did. I presented the career competencies to the class; we talked to them through, and then I asked students to complete the following. Just highlighting -- you can read through this -- I highlighted specific skills, words in here so that you could see what I was helped helping them to get at by doing the activity, I called it "Career Readiness and You Fall 2021." And then they showcased the skill-building by looking at their curriculum and co-curricular activities. I told them to hang on to it. I wanted them to see right from the beginning of their college journey that they were really developing skills right away, even if it didn't seem it in some of their first year courses, and I wanted them to be able to come up with some concrete examples of how they did that, and so here's what they did. They filled out this chart. Okay, and it has all the courses listed on top, and I told them they could add other columns at the end. We went through the competencies; we kept those up in front of us so that we looked at how the competencies are defined and described on the NACE site, and we looked very closely at them, and then we practiced with some; we took a couple of the activities that we were working on in class and said "Okay, how is this developing your critical thinking and Problem Solving?"

And so I would prompt them; they worked in small groups to try to dig more deeply into that. We went through all of this, and then they filled out this chart for me, and they wrote a little paragraph describing it, and then what they did on Monday, at the end of the Semester, was this. I asked him to first go to Focus 2 Careers; we've gone through the site before and taken a couple of the assessments before, so I asked him specifically this time to take the career assessment. "How career ready are you?" Because it gives them feedback on the different competencies in each area. And so they did that, first, before they came to class and then I asked him to take the career chart that they did in October around midterm time, post that, and then add any more data examples, activities to that chart, and then lastly to write up a two paragraph discussion that pulled together the information that they got from their Focus 2 Careers assessment, as well as the chart as evidence for the competencies and the developing, and also what they're still going to be working on.

And you can see from this; this is an example of what one student did. I think it's really interesting. And a lot of students filled out "professionalism" and "work ethic." I remember these are first year students, first semester students, and one of the things that so many of them talk about is. How they've had to learn that they really do need to get up to class, they need to go to class, they need to do their work, they're learning that time management, they're learning how to manage that time, and so many of them felt that something clicked by the end of the semester, for some, and for some it clicked a little bit early, but almost all of them had something to say about that. The behavioral thing you can see, working critical thinking essays and answering questions in class, I wanted... I was hoping that they would talk more about more specifically about that, but that's something at least you're using some of the terms and using some of the language.

And I'll tell you, this is what the student wrote about here, as she..."I've grown in my synthesis, analysis, and critical thinking," which. again, if I asked you, if I asked the students to think about that, she would be able to give me specific examples, but I think it's good that she's developing that vocabulary as a way to think about her own thinking and what she's doing. Problem Solving with her groups, and so she feels confident at this point. "I need to work on my skills for oral presentation." She's identified some things that she thinks that she continues to need to do. And. I think, overall, that they had kind of fun with it, that it was...it gave them something concrete to look at and say "Oh, I am learning. Oh, I am doing something here," and in all of the courses, it get them to reflect on that, which I think is such an important part of the process. And that's it! Under five minutes.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Perfect perfect! Thank you so much Debbie and and if you don't mind stopping your share.

Annie Ou

Right um so I'll be sharing briefly about writing one on one and my class. And so, for writing one on one students are doing a resume and cover letter assignment, so they are creating a resume if they don't have one or revising a resume that they already had. Probably from high school and then they are creating a second future resume.

So what do you want your resume to look like when you graduate. So for a lot of students their current resumes off they're very short and there's not really much on there in terms of experiences or volunteer work or clubs or organizations. So it's really getting them thinking about what clubs organization or part time jobs or volunteer opportunities that they may want to get involved in. So thinking about what duties or positions might help you demonstrate specific strains or develop specific skills. So getting them to think about that.

Hey your resume looks pretty empty right now. Don't wait until you're you're applying for an internship. to know that you know you don't have much on your resume start thinking now about what you want to get involved in, so you can have build your resume as you know begin your first year second year, and your junior senior year you're when you're doing internships, you have stuff on your resume.

And so they create these two resumes and they are using handshake to find an internship or a job related to their field of interest and then to create a cover letter so to look at what jobs are looking for. What skills are strings or characteristics do employers have listed that they want in their their students or in their job candidates. And then so thinking about in their field, what are some of these specific skills that people are looking for and then thinking about their future resume, how can I match up those skills. and try to build up and kind of showcase my skills in these areas, and then they are practicing clearly identifying their strengths in a cover letter.

And then, so in the assignment she are on campus I have I usually try to list the career readiness competencies. And just show that you know how each of the assignments are kind of showing an awareness of their strains are they're trying to plan and develop their own careers. Or we talked a lot about like proofreading really, really carefully for your resumes and cover letters and how important that is and how that's devalued putting pressure professionalism when they eventually get to their jobs.

And so, in my FYS class I'm doing the theme exploring cultures and languages, and so, in my syllabus I have it listed. Somewhere close to the top that under that the three readiness competency that we are focusing on put in particular is equity and inclusion. And so you know I list just directly from the NACE website. What kind of areas that we are going to be focusing on and then some of the things and show, and then we kind of talked about, as we go through the specific. Discussions or activities talk about how that matches up with you know learning more about equity and inclusion and the importance of that. And then so some of these activities are things that are already doing, but just kind of making that more apparent to students and then so some of these things are things like understanding the history and development of African American English. and discuss how languages and dialects interacts intersects with systems of privilege and can limit opportunities

or I have them attend at least to. An hour with China or an hour with Saudi Arabia it's different every semester, but these are talks hosted by Laselle's International Office and. They are talks, give them by international students atlas so whether there are sometimes undergraduate sometimes graduate students are there interviewing someone who's multilingual and learning about their culture and linguistic experiences. So oftentimes just making these connections more explicit to students um

I also have them do a dialect survey study the assignment sheet. And then is adding in I know of. The I have the purpose of the study and then adding in like the career readiness competency and focusing on the aspect of technology. So they have to use either excel or were to make charts and graphs well mainly graphs, and so they are collecting data. About dialects and then creating a graph to show the differences, and that was so we talked about the importance of knowing how to make graphs and how that can. be useful and many careers, even if they are not, you know math related areas and how it's important to be able to use graphs to demonstrate ideas and be able to kind of learn a lot of them haven't had much experience with excel to kind of learn this like very quickly.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Thanks Annie so much and and there's a great conversation going on the chat box and there's I'm sure there's desired asked questions but. Please hold your questions until the very end, and actually that's when we get back as a big group after the the individual in group work so we're next going to hear from Jesse Orlando and she's going to tell us a little bit more about focus to which was mentioned debbie.

Jessi Orlando

Oh thanks hi everyone, so I am going to talk a little bit about Focus 2 kind of go through what it looks like and how you can use it. So we did get a great brief preview from David that's really exciting, but what is Focus 2? Some of you may have heard of it if you haven't it's an online resource that provides an opportunity for students to really self assess. You know their skills personality values their interests and it helps them to connect those things to careers that might be most compatible with those self assessment results. there's five, you can see, I kind of put a screenshot on here, but there are five individual self assessments that students can take their they vary from like some can be as small as two minutes, sometimes a little longer five or 10 minutes, but you can. kind of small, you can see that you can combine the assessments right so students take more than one assessment, they can combine two or option all five.

And what that looks like is it will kind of look at all of the self assessments and it will provide a list of careers that are considered best fit. So you can see here that there are 11 occupations that appear and the three of the assessments that I combined on the student account. And what it does, when you expand, that is, it will give you, you can see in the left hand column what those occupations are, and then it will give you supporting majors that will allow students to kind of follow along that path to get to that career. If you dig a little deeper if you're on the actual site each of these careers will go into much more detail about. different tasks that you might do in this type of role knowledge, skills and abilities needed education requirements so it's pretty in depth there's lots of good information on there. These five self assessments are really good for first year some sophomore students who are still really exploring.

You know students can take a look at these five and they can create sort of like an action plan, what are the classes that they need or want to take based on where they want to get to. What clubs, can they join, what internship opportunities might they want to pursue and even informational interviews to kind of connect with people and build their network. So these are really good for first and second year students but really any benefit any student can benefit from taking these assessments to really understand what their skills, values and interests mean when considering you know drop an internship surging as well.

So I'm going to shift gears a little bit and talk about the MID career ready. assessment which we heard about a little bit earlier I'll give you kind of a brief DEMO of it, I love this assessment, I think it's really good for all students in any class year. But it can be especially helpful for first year students who can take the next three to four years to work on what these competencies are what they need, and how to become more proficient in them. So, at the start of the assessment students are reminded of a nice career readiness competencies if they need a little refresher on what they are, they can hit the little I information by in. To see a brief definition of them, so this is the first thing that they'll see in the career ready assessment next they're going to get. For each of the eight competencies there's three questions per competency and so students will have to kind of. rank or rate themselves based on how proficient they are they think they are for each of the eight usually takes about 10 minutes give or take so it's it's pretty pretty quick.

After they have gone through and they created themselves for each of the eight competencies they're going to get this bar graph it's nice it's a nice visual to really see like wow this person is really great with inclusion there, however, highly developed. With their critical thinking skills are slightly developed and what I think is so great about this assessment is it takes it one step further and it will provide them with that checklist right. And so, if you're looking at, for example, communication skills, I think it's really helpful that there's actually a checklist in front of the students, they can see. Some really great options that they may not have considered in order to build upon what these skills and proficiency is our. I can also spark another idea for them so after completing the checklist they also on the same page have this notes box. box, which I think is really helpful for them to take notes to create smart goals right this. An example for communication right this month, I will go to the career Center and conduct a mock interview, where I can receive constructive feedback and practice verbal and nonverbal communication. So it's a good way to kind of hold them accountable, especially if they're encouraged to go back and revisit these lists of notes students can come into focus to and take these assessments. as many times as they want and kind of Edit and revisit their checklist as well.

What I also think is really cool about this, is it gives students, an opportunity to really understand, like the value of the work that they're doing as students and their involvement in a much more specific way. and to be able to really talk about and articulate their skill set once they get to the interview process for internships and jobs. As well as in their resumes and cover letters so really quick overview of focus to you can use these in your class every student can create an account it's not. A single sign on or anything so they just create their own access their own account the access code that you need is lasers la s era it's all lowercase. that's the only piece of information that students will need in order to create their accounts. But once they're in they can you know there's Those are just a few of the things that are connected with focus to I think those are the biggest ones, but there's tons of other information on there. As well it's really good for starting in the first year, all the way through as seniors so.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Thanks Jessi so much and there were a number of questions in the chat and I think we'll be coming back to them because everybody's pretty pretty. I love this focus to and so happy we have it. So shifting gears a little bit that's sort of the first year first semester experience right first year seminar writing 101 focus to introduction to to that software platform now we're going to look at. Some of the the core curriculum kp's in particular we're going to look at aesthetics and creativity, first with developers are, and then the global historical with holiday peel so deb it's all yours.

Deborah Baldizar

Okay, thanks Denny, um I am the aesthetics and creative coordinator so so the project that I'm going to explain to you today is about is a common assignment that we crafted, and I say we because I can't take full credit for it at all. clear on what we were doing. They would need to have some input put in some say so.

So typically before we had the Davis grant and the focus shifted to career readiness, you know the the kp is individual kp's are assessed on the student outcomes and and there were. reports that faculty teaching the kp is would send to the former aesthetics and creativity coordinator around the student outcomes and then, when I took over, we have a new career readiness focus and some folks I think it was Matt maybe, who said that his syllabus is full of things that. outcomes and objectives, and I think somebody said, and I was thinking, the same thing that it's we're really talking about the same things.

So you know something that I noticed when we got together with the Faculty who are teaching the aesthetics and creative courses which run the gamut from and you see an example examples here, drawing classes English classes music. In which we found out that we felt like the aesthetics and creative courses were not hitting certain of the NACE competencies, as well as they could, so the. Those two were and I have them written as global and inter cultural competencies, but you have them written as equity and inclusion which. But so basically like a cultural sensitivity and understanding of different cultures and teamwork, so we devised a common assignment to help students gain those skills. And then they had to report out to their peers on that assignment and and then we crafted a rubric and created with the help of Heidi who is so amazing once again shout out to Heidi. There is a Canvas course site that everyone taking in it aesthetics and creative course could the students all uploaded there. And then the Faculty assessed it in that site, so we can look at the patterns and see room for growth Okay, I think I'll wrap up there I'm sorry about that that I was so prepared. All right.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Thank you. And now we're going to hear from Halliday with a similar assessment alignment kind of thing that that she in the history faculty did with the global historical knowledge perspective.

Lizbeth Piel

Hello everybody I'm the coordinator for the global and historical kp and in that course there are over 100 sophomores so it's a really good opportunity to do an assessment exercise that will reach students across various majors. And in 2020 I guess spring of 2020 an intern who was working with me in history also worked we work together on a survey questions by using the Canvas discussion board for the one oh four class. The 104 class has meets periodically, there are three sort of big meetings where they have a discussion board, and so we use the third discussion board is kind of an assessment discussion.

And this, basically, you know, this is the prompt here it's asking students to reflect on your time at Lasell provide a statement discussing you know your experience you know which experiences were enriching and make you feel more competent. In one of these areas, and these were four NACE competencies that had originally at the beginning of the project been kind of the ones that the choristers had talked about focusing on. And then the next step was for them to respond to two other students who may have grown in another area that's. different from yours by another means, and can you relate to the experiences and we asked for certain kinds of demographic experience information like year at college or you know. What their major was and that that kind of thing and collected that information so that was all in the form of a discussion board and. Probably next time I will. Learn from Debbie to have them fill out the chart because when it's in a discussion board I had to go through and pull out that information and put them in charts which was pretty Labor intensive.

But the where it got really interesting was that, after we got the answers I then took those answers to. The history majors who are juniors and seniors in kind of a more advanced history class and kind of got them engaged in kind of analyzing the history one or four answers and kind of pulling out of it. The part that related to the history which of these competencies. Best relates to the history kp and. seems to be where students in are kind of making progress, and it also in the act of doing that. It allowed those history juniors and seniors to engage in critical thinking and teamwork, as well as you know, thinking. In a more big picture way about assessing education, and I know that some of them want themselves to go into education and this kind of stuff is something that they themselves can put on a CV.

So they then came up with another prompt, for the following Semester, which was in fall and and in this prompt they came up with a number of questions that kind of focused on. Three really four areas that they felt. Best matched history one of four which is global, intercultural fluency teamwork or collaboration and oral and written communications and then. After that survey, we were able to kind of compare the student in one of four what they thought. They were getting out of it with what the history seniors and juniors thought that they were getting out of it, and that was you know it was interesting to see the different. perspectives, of course, as you can see, at the bottom of this slide this this slide was it's part of another presentation that we gave at neon but there's always, of course, the challenge of self reporting, this is indirect data and also. Leading questions can be an issue and appear survey, but I think that the benefit really outweighs the disadvantages because it really gives the. Students, you know, on the one hand, the students who are filling out the surveys are being challenged to think about how even. The history kp can relate to their careers, but on and on the other hand, the seniors and juniors students they're actually getting hands on. Experience and assessment and teaching that can actually go on a CV and look good on a CV for those of them who want to go on to teaching in the future. Thank you.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

No, thank you Halliday that's.

Karin Raye

Hi everyone Thank you so much for having me I'm. I'm kind of overwhelmed by the amazing work that everyone's doing that are making us. who have the senior internship causes look so much better because you're scaffolding all these issues, starting the first year and that allows us to really have platforms and frameworks with which to work with our students, as we prepare to launch them out into the real world. So that's kind of my mission in the internship I teach one of the justice studies interactive classes, and this is a really like a live simulation that we do with our students. that combines both the Ls 443 and the cj we basically teach the same curriculum but they're just two separate classes, because we have two professors that teach it. There were about 26 students in that in the combined classes this year so I'm going to walk you through how I scaffold it and then hopefully pull up. The schedule, so you can kind of see how it all work.

So these are a mock interview strategy that we use because we recognize that without preparation students just don't feel prepared for their interviews and we've seen them go into interviews just really quiet and not animated without the experience and so what we try to do is replicate that simulation over and over for them so that by the time they get to the interviews in the spring, they already know what they need to work on, they know what they're really good at. And so, this is how the process works, and please feel free to ask questions I can't see the chat as I'm presenting but feel free to ask along the way.

So the first thing that we do is we have they're all placed in internships as they go, so they. The first thing we have them do is um schedule an interview with someone in their internship so it's a professional someone they want to get to know a little bit more someone they want to ask questions of. They write their own questions they conduct the interview and either they record it or document it. And they then do some kind of debrief with us in class, and so they are able to conduct an interview which. I feel allows you to understand like if you're doing the interview you really start to understand what it's like to conduct a good interview and. It allows you to reverse the positions with a little less nerve wracking for them, because they're not the recipient of it. At the same time we create a Google Doc and they get to select a profession of interest for their own interview so that's that first phase.

The second is that we go to the cloud we go to class after their interviews and we debrief them we talked about what was successful what went well. How did your person do and, mind you again they're assessing a professional who usually is really strong and good at it so it's a great example of oh that one well and it was like a conversation I really enjoyed that and I learned so much. I felt really connected, which is exactly how we hope they go through their own interview process at the same time, the little you see the metallics on the bottoms from the subtext is that we as faculty. are using the forums that they filled out and trying to then line up professionals that match those choices so. For example, a student can choose, law enforcement, or a lawyer or prosecutor or someone that does policy work or social services. And in this case, Linda Bucci and I are then scrambling to reach out to our contacts and get all these people interested and have them agree to help us do these mock interviews.

The third step is we do an in class simulation with which they write their own questions again they have to submit them online. And, and we use those I put them in pairs and they use them to conduct interviews with each other so it's a simulation without with much lower stakes there's no assessment, except that they just have the experience of. doing the interview one interviews the other, they give them feedback we stop we debrief what went well, what do we need to work on, we do it again and again we do it about three times, if we can in the class, they have a lot of practice. The subtext on that is that we're creating a master interview schedule which I do have I'm not sure I can pull it I don't know Denny you can use certainly for a minute, because I did send it because I got nervous when Dublin. And then, so we have this interview schedule of we're trying to match people with their time and it's essentially scheduled during the class time which is on a Monday for 15 minutes. And we have two classes that run back to back so we then also ask the students, they can go a little bit later, a little bit earlier, which gives us a little free time, so the interviews are about a half an hour piece. he's going to show you the schedule and so, then so then we move on and.

Then we go to the step four, which is the actual live simulation and that's really exciting, because we have these these interviewers on campus and they are. In full sometimes if you're law enforcement you're in full uniform we use a million offices, we have like I think eight different people this year. And we used offices like campus police gives us one of the policing offices, so it feels very real people come in suits the students, we talked about how to dress what's the handshake, how do you go into this. ready for this interview they've seen the questions beforehand they've also seen the evaluation form be beforehand. And the evaluation valuation form does address a couple of the competencies obviously communication professionalism and we have two specific questions on there around equity. and inclusion and on ethics, because those are two things that we assess on and we use this as a larger assessment tool for our department.

So they go into their interviews and they you know engaged for half an hour with a professional who fills out this really. Pretty intensive and very detailed evaluation form which I also have, if I have a chance to share it, I will, if not I'll send it. And then, a lot of the times the professional will spend a couple minutes at the end debriefing with them of like hey this went really well this just makes you want to work on. And then the final stage is that we come back into class as an assignment, they have to debrief it do a self reflection. They write Thank you notes and then they we talked about what went well and what didn't and and for them that's a really positive experience I give them back their evaluations.

And so, some of the comments that I've seen after this are like I hate you Professor ready, but that was the best thing that we've ever done. Because it does force them to face that nervousness and that's probably the primary thing that I hear from students is. The really, really nervous and they need to learn how to sort of move through that and we talked a lot about practicing and and just keeping it in the preparation and and sharing pieces of yourself that's another reflection I've seen. A lot of them comment on it was good to know where I am in the process, and what I need to work on for the for the spring, so how am I doing on time Denny my good and. I'll see if I can just pull that I don't know if I have it, that one EVAL. form so just so you can see it, this is the critique page um I don't know if I'm gonna be able to get it sorry.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

That's okay well. yeah we're probably because we are a little bit over time, so, so why don't we will will fold that in will get that into the workshop materials it's available to. Everybody on the on the team site thanks Karen so much yeah. And so, now we shift to the psychology department and matt is going to share for us a video from Sarah beth a contribution from Sarah beth goal.

Video (Sarahbeth Golden)

Hi everyone I'm Sarahbeth Golden. I'm going to talk about a pre professional assignment that I use in hs 417 or field intervention strategies, this is the, the first part in two parts of a year long seminar that our senior psychology and sociology students meet and it accompanies their clinical internships well, some of them are in clinical internships, some of them are. Just interning in a nonprofit not necessarily doing clinical work.

So I'm going to talk about two assignments, one is an a weekly assignment that they they submit each week it's a soap note. Soap notes are a common form of documentation that clinicians in the field us to document their work with a client. For the sake of our class the students submit these soaps, their formatted similarly to the real life soap note and. The students use these to report on their internship experiences they analyze the observations that they're making. They might make recommendations for a change to their agency or something that they're wondering about possibly changing. And they identify next steps that they're going to take so it's not the exact same thing as a clinical soap note, but it does have a lot of similarities and get students in the practice of professional writing in terms of keeping it brief and descriptive and rooted in facts.

The second assignment that I wanted to describe and this is something that that Charlotte Frazier also does in her class she uses the soaps, as well. Is this mock case conference that we hold each fall and so, for those of you who aren't familiar with a case conference typically in the. In the healthcare field if there is a problematic case, one of the ways to deal with it is to get a bunch of professionals in the room, with different perspectives and come up with. strategies for best approaching the problem and helping the client and so in the case of our case Conference, we have the students read this book. bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison maybe many of you may have read it already it's it's a great book it's the covers a very poor rural. Family in South Carolina and it focuses on a little girl and her younger sister and so. I write a role for each of the students a professional role, some of them are clinical social worker, some of them are. psycho therapist some of them are PhDs in psychology that just aren't maybe experts in abuse and trauma. I have a role for somebody that's based on them being like an attorney or a domestic violence survivor advocate.

So I write a role for each student. That typically revive It requires an advanced degree or additional training beyond undergrad. Many of these roles are inhabited by their current Supervisor is that their internships and I tried to write the rule, based on what the students interests are and where they're interning, and so they basically. read the book which serves as the case file through the eyes of their role and then we cut convene a case Conference, where each student takes turns presenting for like three or four minutes. What they think should happen to these two sisters.

So they're charged with determining placement and services for these two sisters. And so, each student kind of shares their perspective and they their analysis of the clients from the book using whatever information we have in the book that I say that is your case file, this is what you have access to. They use their imaginations to they might pretend that they interviewed them and they talk about what the interview was like with with the client but. They end up just you know, presenting and then having a conversation with each other, asking each other questions following up on different. ideas and a lot of times in the better case conferences, they disagree and they really have to hash out. Well, what does it mean to keep the sisters together what does it mean to separate them, and it should one of them go into residential treatment and the other one stays with a family member what you know what are the pros and cons of these. These different recommendations, and so the students leave the case Conference with a real. appreciation for the complexity of of a case conference and of mental health treatment and care there's not necessarily one right way to go about doing it so.

I have such a great time watching them do this it's really hard for me to keep my mouth shut but, and I look forward to the class following the case conference almost as much as the actual case Conference, because. It typically takes a full hour and 15 minutes, and so the next class we devote to kind of processing it and talking about like you know what they thought about it so it's it's a fun assignment. And the students also write a soap note, based on their role so they write an a real like clinical soap note about the the characters in this book and their role in terms of helping them so. Hopefully that gives you some ideas of what Charlotte and I are doing, and thanks for thanks for listening.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Thank you Matt, thank you, Sarahbeth and now we're going to hear a little bit more about this from Charlotte.

Charlotte Frazier

Okay um, let me just hopefully I can share my screen.

There we go okay so um as Sarahbeth said in the video we both do this. In our separate sections of the internship seminar, and she really provided a really nice overview and introduction to the assignment so.

I just thought I would kind of come in with a little bit more in terms of the fine details and so. I just wanted to share with you that the conference has this overall purpose and, just like in a real life. Case conference or staffing you want to determine placement and treatment services for the two sisters in the novel so there's Ruth and there's resort our sisters of the novel who have. Really sort of undergone quite a bit of trauma based on the family and a lot of the things that are happening in the context of the novel and so as a whole, the students have to decide what is the the best. placement for each sister and whether they want to place them together or not, and then also what sort of services, what each of them need.

And so the conference itself is broken down into these three portions Sarahbeth said there's sort of the individual staff report in the beginning. Each student gets about three or four minutes, where they come in and they give a professional report of their opinion. Based on the role that they've been given which I'll show in just a minute. And then there's the team discussion portion, which is about 25 minutes, where then students can either add in things that they didn't get to put into their initial report. or they can ask follow up questions of another team Member, they can debate or go back and forth in terms of determining the placement services. And then the last portion the last seven or 10 minutes of the conference, they have to come to some sort of consensus as a team in terms of the placement and the treatment if, for some reason. They cannot come to a consensus, which I have yet to see that happen, but if that happens, there is one student. That has the role of convener, this is the person who's the facilitator who's actually. kind of keeping the time and facilitating discussion among the TEAM members at the very end if there's no consensus, the convener has to make the decision. So the The entire thing runs you know the whole 75 minute class and it's broken up into these portions.

I just wanted to provide just some examples of the staff roles. As Sarahbeth said we give them a role, based on either their interests or their current internship settings we try to tailor it a little bit to them. And you know we have fun with it so here's an example here this person is assigned the trauma specialist. And we give them very specific things that they're trying to talk about India or report based on whatever their professional role is or their training. And so, for example, with this person, they would come in the room, as Dr showing up Okay, so they have to come in, in that role, and I actually encourage them. You know, after we do the initial you know, everybody gets seated sort of thing that they immediately go into that role and stay in that role for the entire time. here's just another example, this person to domestic violence outreach and prevention specialist again has very specific parts of the novel that they're looking at and then talking about in there all report. This is. The person who was the convener, at least for this past semesters conference, this is the description for that role this person is a child psychologists specialization and trauma again looking at very, very specific things and the convener role. really gets all the power and so after I walk in, and I think Sarahbeth does the same thing after we walk in you know, maybe take attendance or something we sort of go to the corner of the room and we don't say anything for the rest of the class, so the convener is in control.

We know we sort of fade in the background, so the class has control of the entire. session and we tried to say or do as little as possible to distract them from that and usually students are kind of shy in the beginning or nervous. But I would say within 20 minutes or so they're into it and they are sort of focused on each other and not us, as the instructors so here are just some pictures, I took from this semester's Conference, and so you can see there. On the left that's haley Sherman, who was the convener for this semester. Just some other pictures here.

And so um you know I think the students really kind of similar to what Karen said the students really kind of sigh and roll their eyes when they initially get this assignment. i've had students say Oh, this is so nerve racking you know this is going to make me so anxious. And yeah at the end they feel so good about what they've done and so I'm just thinking about some of the reflections. That i've gotten from students, they always tend to say I feel like a real professional now like this is a real bridge for me between being a student in an internship class. and actually going out and being a professional, many of them talk about getting more confidence in terms of their oral skills. I can, I find it so many students have. like this real tough anxiety about speaking in front of others and initially that happens with this assignment, but once they do it, it really is like a confidence booster, and so I think that's really good developmental piece.

Having disagreement, you know, Sarahbeth hinted about this in the video we actually want them to disagree with each other, we want them to back up their opinions and so. You know this idea of oh I don't want to you know cause any problems I don't want to disagree with another person in the class. We actually encourage them to do that, so that they get comfortable with that, because in real life, this is what happens you're not going to have the same opinion as everybody on the treatment team. So it gives them a little bit of permission to do that, and then to figure out how to do it in a way that is professional. It doesn't you know cause strife within the team.

And then, a lot of students are at internship sites where maybe they're actually having treatment team meetings or staffing, so they might call them and so that what they'll report is after this assignment they understand what's happening at the internship a lot better. A lot of them will say oh now I kind of see what's happening or I kind of see the role that different people play at my internship and so, then it really dovetails nicely with the internship experience, so you know i've had a lot of fun with it, I think. Some students take to it more than others, but i've had some students really get into it, a couple. couple years ago, I had a student who came in, like in a full suit and came in and said hi I'm Dr so, and so, and the whole time stayed in that role was very serious about it, and he did a wonderful job so you know I think it's a little scary, but I think it also provides so much growth.

Gail Jauregui

In such a short period of time.

Charlotte Frazier

So I'll stop my share there.

Dennis (Denny) Frey

Thanks so much Charlotte. It amazing stuff and we're going to wrap up the five minute rapid shares with lori rosenthal also talking about indirect with this assignment so I'll allow Lori to take it from here.

Lori Rosenthal

Okay, so I will I did not make a PowerPoint. And I wanted to be a little bit flexible based on how other people had presented prior to me, because what Denny asked me to talk about. was how we've aligned a series of assignments across courses and my goal was really to talk about the the example that you just heard from Charlotte and Sarahbeth but I'm going to pop in another little tidbit.

Because I'm as I was hearing some of the other presentations I realized that that we do this in a lot of ways, both with in progress, but also across programs, and I wanted to give you two examples. And so I spent a lot of time talking with a variety professors about what they do in their classes, I was very familiar with the assignment that Annie oh had shared about how. They have students write a resume they have them analyze the job description and they do that in the writing one on one class. And if you think about that as sort of the beginning of of a of a progression in your career and then Karen's class at the end what can re shared about how she's preparing them for an interview. there's some some pieces in between that any of us can add once we know about these two assignments, to get them from the resume. improving their resume thinking about how they're going to answer questions in a in an interview situation and then they're in a class where they can actually do the interview situation.

And, and so, and I have done that in some of my 200 level classes, I actually pick content related issues that we can discuss where I have them prep. interview answers, and so one is an example we in my personality class where we talk about personality, I have them go back to the assignment that they did and writing one on one and. Think about the advertisement and the job and what kind of personality characteristics might someone look for if they're hiring in that particular job. And then, when you go into an interview, one of the most common interview questions is for someone to kind of sit back in their chair, where they're not really sure how to start and they say so tell me about yourself. And people often start rambling because they're not sure how to answer that, and so I teach them how to use that job analysis to answer the question, and they have to come up with an answer to that question to try to scaffold them from that interview. That resume description of the listing on their resume and that analysis of the job to the one I have to answer 10 questions in an interview. And then they get feedback and they give feedback to each other.

But what I was really asked to talk about from Jenny was was this assignment that Sarahbeth and Charlotte has just talked about. So so obviously they described it in a lot of depth and and I think you could see how it's how this assignment is really tied into those nice career goals about. about their career development and their self development and they're active listening skills and their ability to communicate and persuade others, which is a real leadership skill. But clearly students can't jump into that project without preparation. So they have to gain some of those skills and some of our 203 hundred level courses related to you know background content and counseling skills and active listening skills. But I teach the intro class the sake, one on one class, I mean we do offer this class and. You know a lot of students take psych one on one I happen to teach the section that is geared toward the social science major so I typically have education students and. psychology students and sociology students in there and so these are often you know, the vast majority of them are I know are going to go on and do this case conference assignment with Charlotte and Sarahbeth. And so I tell them about that right it's like one on one I tell them when you're a senior you're going to do a case Conference, and this is how professionals in these fields, because it happens in education psychology and.

Often, a health related careers and where they where people get together, because they have different ideas about how to treat. Something whether it's a social problem, like we're talking about in this particular assignment or or a health problem in a more medical situation. And in savannah create really kind of a mini or introductory version of what they do that's kind of a cross between a case study in a role play. And so I do this in our coverage of of the content for mental illness so we're learning, you know the students are learning a little bit about the symptoms and the treatment for a variety of different illnesses, just as an introduction into the field. And I asked them each to take on the role of a very specific type of psychologists and I assign those roles and I do that fairly randomly and. But it's not entirely random because I do have some roles that are easier and some roles that are harder so students who are a little more advanced I I make sure to give them kind of the harder ones, and some of the ones that that struggle, a little bit more I have. specific roles I hold for them, and so they get instructions about investigating how would a psychologist from this particular background in this particular perspective, how would they treat a person with a mental illness.

And so, so about five I usually give about three to four students, the same role and then three to four students get the role of a parent whose job it is to research the symptoms of depression and come up with a story about having a child who is exhibiting symptoms, in some way. And then I asked them to also prepare that they're going to have disagreements that they're going to present their. What they think is the appropriate treatment, based on their role, not their own personal opinion there, they have to step out of their personal opinions about how to treat depression and. They get they have to figure out what sort of what are the advantages of this particular treatment, what are the disadvantages what are some of the other treatment options. When they come to class the next day, I give them about 10 minutes or so in a group with people who are given the same role so that they can compare. They can ask questions to each other, they can make sure they're kind of all on the same page with understanding that treatment option. But then I mix them up in groups so there's one person in each group, who is a parent. And there's one person in each group who's going to come in and suggest that that medication is the best way to treat depression and there's another person in the group who is really against medication and instead wants to advocate for. More natural remedies like St john's wort. And there's always a then there's a person in the group who is going to take a psychodynamic therapeutic approach more of a talk therapy approach, but with a very stress or 40 under psychodynamic perspective. Another person comes in, with expertise on cognitive behavior therapy and in the course of the role play the parent presents. What their child is struggling with and then each person in their role talks about what treatment they think would be the best.

And I do set it up that I want them to argue with each other, because I want them to practice that skill, so that when they get into that course with Charlotte and with Sarahbeth that they do feel a little bit more comfortable. Both being in the role but also advocating for that position and, at the end of it, the parent has to decide which is the treatment that that if they were really the parent, which is the treatment that they would pick. And they don't always pick the same treatment and so it's always interesting in the in the debrief at the end about why the parent pick different treatments and what the students did well in terms of developing their persuasive arguments or what they didn't do well. And that's it.