Your CBEL Project Grade will take into account and be an accumulation of all CBEL components of the course, including presentations, reflections, your outline, peer, self and institutional evaluations, etc… Part of this grade will use your project synopsis as a guide to understand the work you did, and what was learned. You have a choice of the form of your synopsis, it can consist of gradual contributions and updates to your blog section throughout the term, (at least three) or it can consist of a 3-4 page paper due at the end of the term.
OPTION 1: BLOG CONTRIBUTIONS
You may fulfill your project synopsis throughout the course by adding at least four more blog posts/contributions during the term, the posts must be at least a couple of days apart. However, required posts and final resume line do not adhere to the same scatter. This option is less summative and more accumulative, and thus may consist of blog posts that report on a specific detail, moment, or event that you participated in. Since these blog visits will record the ‘during’ of the partnership, that means the posts may consist of just about any moment or idea that may come at different intervals of the course.
Overall, the contributions should show a varying of approaches, particularly; images, some auto-ethnographic accounts of your process through the partnership, and connections to readings through quotes, class discussions or other class work.
You can include:
- Interim written or creative reflections on new revelations or insights of the art world.
You may use the general guideline by Kolb’s (1984) cycle of reflection, which consists of: “What? (did you notice) “So What?” (could it mean) followed by “Now What?” (will you do with that information, how will you use, apply or process it?). The final question is the most evolved handling in the process.
- Profile/research of the community (geographical or cultural) you are working in/with and how this relates to in class conversations, readings, or other research.
- Images of your work space, with a description of what you saw/heard or even tasted, impressions of how the space functions, surprises that defied expectations about how the space was set up, and can even include further questions you wish to uncover.
- You may wish to add notices of when the trajectory of your project changed, why it changed, and how you will prepare and adapt for that change.
- An image of an object you created or an event you were part of that is captioned by details, and described skills you utilized and/or gained to complete the task.
- Quotes or details of a shift, summary of conversation with co-workers, supervisor, or even with yourself, biography posts/pages on people, artworks, books you are working with or learning about.
- Post describing insights of how class work (in this class or other classes) has been activated in your partnership time, how, what that means, and how you can continue to use these influential cross-overs in your thinking. Please include quotes.
- A curation of vital links & resources you’ve amounted.
- You may also want to get some ideas from the hard copy synopsis prompt below.
Beyond the minimum extra four posts, you are to also provide a post that contains a fully developed resume line(s) that details the name of the space, title of role, etc… and underneath that heading, write a brief summary of key skills and professional characteristics that you utilized in the position. Including the resume post, which will indicate the end of your blog updates, you should have at least seven, but more if you like, authored posts scattered throughout the term to opt for this method.
The blogs will be visited intermittently throughout the course, but will ultimately be graded for the December 6th deadline. Please remember to categorize your posts with your partnership label so that I can see when I click on your menu link.
or (you only need to do one!)
OPTION 2: FINAL SYNOPSIS/REPORT
You must hand in a 1000-1500 word (hardcopy) project synopsis to aid in communication and clarity of the components and overall growth of your partnership project. For this report, I highly recommend that you re-visit your initial outline that you handed in, and revise it to show the tasks, changes and evolution of the partnership engagement project itself, for the second part of the paper please delve into larger understandings and growth. This report should develop a cumulative understanding that summarizes experiences of the term.
Guidelines of what should be covered in the report:
- Describe exactly what you did for the project. You can figure out how to organize this (if it was many components) in the best way possible to communicate the areas you covered.
- The description can be modeled from your initial outline that you handed in, and you can actively update it. Or you can start from scratch.
- What you did may have changed, this was very much expected — don’t worry or see it as anything but an exercise in being flexible!
- If your role changed, how did it differ from your initial project plan? How come? What did you do with that challenge? How did you feel about it?
- If your schedule changed, how did it differ from your initial timeline? Why did it change?
- Describe the geographical and cultural location of your partnership/institution and how this informed your impression and type of work, name critical outlooks on the successes and limitations of the integration of the community you were in.
- Detail the relationship you had with your co-workers, peers in the class, supervisor, or other personnel that you encountered in the position, did you have any opportunities or challenges with relationships? Looking back, how do you think you could improve next time?
- List skills you previously had that you utilized for the project, and how you used them.
- List new skills you had to gain to complete the project, and describe how you felt about that.
- Dissect when and how these skills may be useful in the future.
- Detail lessons learned, new insights, and applications of your partnership overall, including a critique of your improvement/progress throughout the project.
- Develop an analysis of the ‘real world’ experience as an academic enterprise, therefore approach affective (doing & feeling) responses towards cognitive execution. Therefore, describe ways the experience connected to course learning outcomes and content? Readings and discussions? What concepts and principles does it illustrate?
- As well, describe any challenges you encountered, or things you had to figure your way through. Describe your decision-making/research process, what steps and what strategies did you take? What problems did you encounter and how did you overcome?
- Did you take any risks and get out of your comfort zone? When and how did it feel? What did you learn and what will you do with that new understanding?
- You may want to wrap up the paper by describing how you would assess your own progress, growth, strengths and weaknesses. How valuable was this experience to your learning? What did you learn through it? Now that you have finished, what would you do differently?
- At the end of the synopsis, also include a resume line that details the name of the space, title of role, etc… and underneath that heading, write a brief summary of key skills and professional characteristics that you utilized in the position.
(Think of this final component as how you would write out this experience on your resume!)
- As this is a hard copy document, print images alongside to visually illustrate the space you worked in, the project you worked on, or yourself in context of the space, activities and actions.
Due: At grand finale party (last day of contact) hard-copy form.