This course is designed to help students understand the purpose and values of higher education; to cultivate the skills, strategies, abilities, and traits that enable success in post-secondary education and beyond; and to feel more confident in their university studies. The course is highly experiential and encourages students to reflect on why they are in university, what they hope to gain from the experience, and how they wish to work actively to achieve their personal, academic, and professional goals.
The course will include a variety of learning experiences contingent upon regular attendance and dedicated participation. Because the university experience is a complex and highly interactive process, much of the class time will be devoted to group experiential exercises, individual reflective tasks, collaborative endeavors, and practical assignments. Additionally, one central goal of the course is to have fun: to preserve and nurture the creative and imaginative spirit that is the foundation of the university experience.
The class schedule is provisional, subject to change, and somewhat dynamic. In other words, we will cover everything listed below, but not necessarily in the exact order listed below. Building an experiential classroom is much like growing a garden; you have to see it how it grows.
All readings are available online and will be discussed in class. A preliminary (non-exhaustive) list follows below.
Please also follow your instructor's posts on twitter.
This assignment is designed to enable you to reflect on your reasons for coming to university, what has led you to this point, and how you view yourself as a student. In a brief essay (details to be discussed in class) you will describe how you perceive your abilities as a student and what has contributed to this view. You will discuss your educational journey up to this point, including any moments that stand out as important to you (positive or negative). In addition, you will discuss what led you to the decision to come to university and how you are feeling about what lies ahead.
Your essay will be evaluated on the depth of reflection and quality of writing. Please note that this first assignment is also designed to give your instructor a sense of your concerns and your level of writing.
This essay will be roughly 600 to 900 words and is worth ten percent of your grade.
A self-reflection essay depends on self-awareness, which is a complex and sometimes difficult skill to master. The short list which follows can be viewed as a primer for self-awareness; it shows the direction of thinking, or feeling, that self-awareness and mindfulness entail. If you get stuck, please use these prompts to guide your reflection essay:
These questions, and many others, require the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness. As we continue in the course, you may wish to consider these questions as they apply to you. At the very least, you might wish to consider what you are currently working on in your life, in which direction your attention is drawn, into which of the innumerable themes of human nature you are now called to delve.
Self-awareness is a basic skill in personal and academic development, and is one which we will explore repeatedly throughout the course. Actually, self-awareness is the most important ability of all, and is therefore central to this course.
This assignment builds upon, and in many ways is similar to, the first self-reflection essay. But this second assignment is more focused on your specific goals, priorities and intentions while at university.
There are there parts to this assignment, as follows:
During the first week of the assignment you will be asked to keep track of your time. This includes time spent sleeping, preparing food and eating, getting ready, commuting, attending class, studying, working, taking care of dependents, exercising, watching TV, playing video games, socializing, etc. At the end of one week, you will make a tally of how much time you spent in each of these activities and reflect on your thoughts about these findings. You will be asked to consider what each of these activities contributes to or detracts from the quality of your life.
During the first week of the assignment you will also be asked to outline at least two goals for the semester, two goals for the year, and two goals that you would like to achieve throughout your time at Kwantlen. In addition, you will be asked to consider the various activities and relationships in your life and what priority they have for you and why. You will be asked to discuss whether you believe that you are currently living in a way that is moving you towards or away from these goals and priorities and why this is happening.
You will also be asked to create a schedule for the semester ahead, including various details of coursework, deadlines, assignments, work commitments, personal commitments, and so on.
During the second week of the assignment you will be asked to begin each day with ten to fifteen minutes of silence in which you mindfully contemplate what it is you most want to accomplish (the process of developing mindfulness will be discussed in class and will be practised through a series of exercises). You will be asked to use these periods of mindfulness to consider which changes you would like to make to your current approach to your lifestyle and time allocation. In this second week, you will once again track your time, but this time you will focus on making your desired changes.
The assignment concludes with a short analysis (roughly 500 words) that explores your learning within the context of the assignment. What did you learn in the first part of the assignment? What stood out most in the second part of the assignment? How did things change across the weeks? What did you do differently? How did reality line up with your expectations? What got in the way? What will you continue to do differently, or what might you work on in the future to continue moving towards your goals? These and other suggested lines of inquiry will be discussed in class.
This assignment is worth 20 percent of your final grade.
Each participant will help develop, with two or three other class members, a group project. The schedule for presentations will be determined in class. Selecting a topic, and with prior instructor approval, each group will present for between 20 and 40 minutes. The presentations must provide an experiential component, a group discussion component, and an informational component. Additionally, each group must provide approximately equal presentation time to each of its members. Each group will also prepare a handout summary of their topic (with short reference bibliography, as required) to present to each member of the class as a professional resource.
Assessment criteria for the group presentations are as follows:
The central idea of the presentations for this course is to give you opportunities to practice interdisciplinary thinking, collaboration, and expression. As such, the group presentations should be interdisciplinary. Essentially, this means that you should try to use multiple presentation strategies and modalities. These might include (but are certainly not limited to) any of the following:
Whenever possible (and workable), try to mix together multiple modalities into a single presentation. For example, you might ask the group to do some individual reflection using the modality of poetry, then create a series of movements based on the poetry, then work in small groups to talk about and share the process. Many configurations are possible. The trick is to choose an activity that you enjoy, then find a way to apply it to the content (suggested presentation topics will be discussed in class). Please do not create your group presentations using only written and/or spoken materials. In other words, don't just stand up at the front of the class and talk about the presentation topic. Utilize the energy of the group. Feel free to experiment with activities and modalities that may not seem, on the surface, to be related to the topic at hand but which might, upon experiment, yield surprising connections and results. Be playful. Allow yourself to laugh at yourself, to be embarrassed, to engage with the process in novel and interesting ways.
In authentic university work (which is, by definition, interdisciplinary), riddles and puzzles are highly prized. Accordingly, the presentations should (ideally) not be complete explanations or presentations of material. Feel free to play with challenging exercises, with impossible scenarios, and other conundra.
The best presentations offer more questions than answers. They, are essentially, gateways into the mysterious–which, as Einstein will tell you, is an important place to be:
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."
The group project is worth 15 percent of your final grade (and is a replica, in miniature, of your involvement in the entire class).
You will be encouraged to work on your writing throughout the course. Accordingly, you will be asked to keep a journal and also, on occasion, to write in class. The journal is worth 10 percent of your final grade. The quick writing sessions are worth 5 percent (for a total of 15 percent).
The journal assignment is designed to assist you in identifying challenges you face, strategies you develop, and other issues relevant to your unique experience as a student. You may write about any issue that is important to you. The journal entries are private, and should be treated as such. Your instructor will not ask to see them. Rather, in the final week of the course, you will be asked to write a short summary (roughly 600 to 900 words) of your journal. This summary will articulate themes, points of growth and change, insights you have gained over the semester, challenges you have faced and overcome, and/or challenges you continue to face. The summary will include only those themes and issues that you feel comfortable sharing with your instructor.
The journal will be evaluated based on the extent to which you demonstrate the ability to identify recurrent themes, changes, insights, and challenges in your life as a student.
At various points in the class, your instructor will ask you to complete short quizzes based on the material we have been covering in class. These quizzes are worth 15 percent of your grade.
Writing is one of the most challenging and important tasks faced by post-secondary students (hint: strong writing abilities are the key to high grades). While many students think their writing abilities are strong, the standards in post-secondary are often very different than those required in high school or the workplace. Moreover, no matter who you are (elementary school student to university professor) and no matter what your current writing abilities, your writing can always be improved.
Accordingly, this course will assist you with your writing abilities by helping you to learn the function, structure, and method of essay-writing. You will break the often overwhelming task of writing into more manageable steps, will learn how to evaluate the quality of your sources, and will be introduced to the standards of post-secondary writing (which involve, essentially, the tasks of presenting logical, well-structured arguments in defense of a particular position).
This assignment will require you to research and present your case or position on a particular social issue.The essay assignment begins with a preparation stage that includes (among other things) strategies for developing a research question, an outline, and a first draft. Then you will work on revisions, with a final goal of submitting a research essay of roughly 1500 words.
You will be asked to use at least six references. A minimum of four of these references must be research articles from peer-reviewed journals or scholarly books. A maximum of two of these references may be from credible Internet sites. (We will discuss in class what constitutes a scholarly book and indicators that suggest a website is credible.)
The criteria list below (though not exhaustive, and not in order of priority) will give you a sense of what types of abilities you will need to demonstrate in the essay:
The above abilities represent a broad set of evolving competencies for every writer. You will not be expected to master all of these abilities in this course; rather, you will be encouraged to become aware of your strengths and challenges, to motivate yourself toward greater skill, and to work toward academic excellence.
The essay will be discussed at length in class, and is worth 25 percent of your final grade.
For most of its history literature has taken the form of epic poetry. This history is long: five thousand years, perhaps much longer. And within the genre of epic poetry — from the Egyptian Pyramid Texts to Homer to the Kalevala — every word counts. The rhythm counts. Resonance and fluidity count. No slack exists in these texts, no lazy meanderings of phrase or structure. These ancients texts are spare, clean, and tight. We could learn a great deal from these archaic authors. There are reasons for the enduring quality of their texts.
So, to be an epic poet:
Good writing, in my view, builds sentence upon sentence. Each new contribution adds to the structure and the framework of clarity. Why go farther (Quick Tip: “farther” refers to distance or extent; “further” denotes an action in service of) — why go farther down your creative track when the foundation is not yet established? I know, you have probably been told to just write, to get words on the page, to come back to them later and try to make sense of your scratchings. No, I am not a fan of this approach. I prefer to approach writing as a Zen-like activity, an action of the razor-sharp mind and open heart working together. Writing, for me, is not catharsis but clarity.
Let’s take a practical example. Here’s a possible sentence:
Down on Granville Street, where my grandfather's jewelry store used to be, there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated.
Alright, this is a start. I’m trying to say something in this sentence: about change, nostalgia, perhaps about renewal. It’s not yet clear. So, let’s start with the beginning:
Down on Granville Street
Down and on are both prepositions, only one of which is required. Therefore we can make this first phrase more succinct:
On Granville Street
Next up, the second phrase:
where my grandfather's jewelry store used to be
This phrase is the heart of the sentence; it needs to be clear and strong. Used to be is an awkward verb phrase. It tries to articulate, in three words, the nostalgia and ambivalence of the sentence. And yet, used to be is almost devoid of meaning here. It is a marker and nothing more. Let’s try something more robust and imaginal:
where my grandfather's jewelry store once stood
By using once stood in this way, we’re indicating the past in more resonant terms. We are also implying a fall — what once stood, then fell. Also, we’re implying a steadfastness of the old place, a sense of presence that was previously lacking. So far so good. Now, onto the tricky part:
there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated
Well, this is a tidy mess. Too many things going on, too many overt indications when subtlety is called for. Not to mention the awkward phrase a bunch of. Yikes. Where to begin? How about with some editing:
there are now a bunch of old, boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated
OK, this makes things a bit easier. Now we have the rudiments of a decent clause, something about old buildings:
boarded-up buildings waiting quietly to be renovated
We know that the gerunds and adverbs are typically (except right here!) to be avoided, so we can clean up the phrase:
boarded-up buildings wait to be renovated
Now, tumbledown is a better word than boarded-up (ramshackle would be good here, too). And wait to be renovated is awkward and anthropomorphic in a way that doesn’t seem to suit the imagery of the sentence. And we might spruce up the language a bit with some alliteration (use sparingly!):
tumbledown buildings lie in lethargy
Better. But I keep thinking about ramshackle and tumbledown. Could I use both? Let’s see:
ramshackle buildings lie in lethargy upon the tumbledown street.
I like this. But it will require that I abandon my theme of renewal. The sentence will be more sad without it, yet probably more authentic too. And less self-conscious. Let’s try the whole thing out:
On Granville Street, where my grandfather's jewelry store once stood, ramshackle buildings lie in lethargy upon the tumbledown street.
Not bad. The sentence embodies nostalgia, sadness, personal and social loss, and something else — but we don’t know what yet. It’s something about what happens next, or later, the contrast between the past and the present. The sentence itself leads me on, as its writer, to the next stage. It provokes me to think about contrasts, about words such as glittering and forlorn, and about what we preserve and discard. I cannot write the next sentence without first the polished catalyst of the first.
(An expanded and more detailed version of this document — in PDF format — is attached to this post.)
The expectation is that you will attend all sessions and involve yourself in the class process. Your willingness to engage creatively with the learning process, to take appropriate personal risks, and to participate in group activities are all central to your involvement in this class. Developing a sense of personal, academic, and professional direction is very much a process of blending your own personal awareness with abilities and practical techniques. Therefore, your own emotional involvement in the class is as important as your academic knowledge of the material.
You will be expected to attend lectures, participate actively, and complete all course assignments. While attendance is voluntary (as it is in most post-secondary courses), the key to success in any course involves taking time to integrate material from lectures, discussions, activities, and your own reflections. If you miss class, it is your responsibility to catch up. Please ask your instructor if you are unsure about how to do this.
The following (not exhaustive) list of considerations will be used in determining the quality of your attendance and participation:
Effective participation in this class has multiple dimensions, some of which may be measured objectively (such as effective writing) and some of which are signals of interpersonal ability and self-awareness. Interpersonal abilities are subtle, difficult to quantify, complex beyond any measurement scheme, and are the single most important predictor of life success. Accordingly, we pay great attention to interpersonal ability in this class, and we offer the following guidelines for assessing your own development in this area:
Those who possess exemplary personal abilities are relaxed, open, responsive, and kind. Often they exhibit abilities that we tend to assign to the social sphere: personal warmth, consideration of others, hesitancy to judge, sensitivity to emotions. To some extent, these features – which are aspects of temperament more than they are learned skills – can be evaluated using rating scales based on observation. Empathy rating scales are often used for this purpose in counselling training programs. Such scales, or other, similar assessment measures, are useful as baselines, or starting points; but they cannot replace the interpretations of peers and colleagues – of regular people, in other words – in assessing the quality of interpersonal ability. There are simply far too many factors in interpersonal communication for any standardized evaluation procedure to measure.
On the other hand, many details of interpersonal ability are well-known, and may be summarized as follows:
Please pay attention to these qualities and abilities as we move forward.