#final make

I am very excited to share my final make! ED677 has been a great learning experience for me, and I have been fortunate enough to find a plethora of ways connected learning principles can and should play into my work as an educator.

My final make is a semester-long, leadership development program for college students called Connecting for Community Impact.

From the linked document, this is a description of the program:

Using the connected learning principles, this semester-long workshop series encourages students to discover their strengths as leaders and utilize them to do meaningful work in their community. Beginning with leadership and interest inventories, students will learn to be more cognizant of the ways that they lead and what they are passionate about. After learning valuable communication and collaboration skills students will begin a long-term project to develop their skills in a cause that matters to them. This is meant to be a workshop series for people in any stage of their leadership journey - whether they know nothing about their leadership style or they are experienced community leaders.

The linked document also includes a schedule for the series, which includes 7 meetings/workshops for the students involved. There are also learning outcomes and a more in-depth outline which includes activities that could be done at each meeting. This is meant to be a little vague because each facilitator will have a different group of students with different interests and experience levels, so it is meant to be adaptable depending on the needs of the group.

As I was creating the curriculum for this program, I was able to pull together my knowledge of leadership training and development (my passion) and the connected learning principles (super interesting). I found that the two things complemented each other almost seamlessly, and I couldn’t believe I’ve never come across a leadership program that intentionally uses these principles. Below is each connected learning principle and how I infused them into my final make. They are ordered by the degree to which I feel they are incorporated into the program I created.

Interest-powered: The core of this program is allowing students a space to find and develop their own interests. The first few meetings of the program have students brainstorm things they are passionate about, take interest and career inventories, and discuss ideas with their peers. This is all done so that students are able to discover an area that they are truly interested in. The project allows them to further knowledge and skills related to this area that can help inform a later career choice.

Peer-supported: This program was intentionally designed to have multiple opportunities for peer support and relationships. Small group discussions and brainstorming are used in almost every group meeting. Additionally, accountability partners are a main feature of the program. The facilitator will choose a partner for each person to work with throughout the semester. Each pair will be responsible for helping one another through challenges, offering ideas, and providing encouragement. They will hold one another accountable for meeting goals and working through the long-term project.

Production centered: Another facet of the program is the project that is infused throughout. This is meant to make the experience extremely production centered for the students. They are working to create community-focused projects that will have a positive impact. By working on this project, they develop transferable skills that will benefit them throughout their lives while also finding what they are interested in through a project-based approach.

Openly networked: This project is meant to be openly networked in the way that it encourages students to connect with members of the community to help them complete their projects. This is meant to have them meet and form relationships with people outside of the school, and particularly people who are in their field of interest.

Shared purpose: There is a shared purpose among the students and professionals who work within the program. The basis of the program is to develop leadership skills which are valuable to any person. Beyond that, the program encourages everyone involved to truly understand the importance of contributing to their community. Ideally, everyone in the program would have a shared purpose of making a positive impact on the community and becoming better leaders for their community as well.

Academically oriented: As it is meant to be hosted by an educational institution, the program uses a learning and development approach, meaning that we do not expect the students to know everything, but instead set goals for themselves. Students may or may not want to explore a project that pertains to their area of academic study, and that is okay, it remains academically oriented in the way students are encouraged to set goals for themselves and direct their own learning.

Please feel free to explore the document for my final make! It is a Google Doc, so that if I want to make any enhancements to it in the future, it will automatically apply to this post. The document holds a lot of useful tools, even if you don’t want to fully implement the program, such as links to leadership style questionnaires, interest surveys, suggested reading, and other resources related to connected learning in this context.