Approved as a one-year pilot, 10-9-03

DIMENSIONS OF LEARNING

Level I

RATIONALE:  Strong writing and speaking skills are essential for success in college, in work-related settings, and in participation in public life.  This competency is designed to support the development of these skills.  For that reason, it focuses both on developing writing and speaking skills and on employing these skills to enhance the learning that occurs within the Critical Learning Seminar.

The competency starts from the premise that the more we understand about ourselves as learners, the better we learn.  Accordingly, it directs you to explore influences on your development as a learner. This exploration will provide you with insights into your approach to learning and your learning process. 

In writing about these insights, and in writing about the knowledge you acquire through the reading you do, you will strengthen both your personal and your academic writing skills.

Supporting the dynamic link between knowing and expressing is the competency’s focus on the development of speaking skills.  During your Critical Learning Seminar, you will be required to develop selected aspects of your written work into oral presentations.  In addition to developing your speaking skills, the process of transforming a written product into an effective oral presentation will help you to understand the critical differences between the two modes of presentation.

COMPETENCY:  Can demonstrate clear use of language, coherent structure, and appropriate use of sources in personal and academic essays and in oral presentations.

CRITERIA:

1.  Write an essay that describes important influences on your development as a learner.

2.  Select one of the influences on your learning that you discussed in Criterion 1 and develop it into an oral presentation.

3.  Write an essay that describes important insights into your life and/or learning   experiences gained from a published text.

4.  In an essay, compare two readings related to the topic of your Critical Learning Seminar that particularly advanced your understanding of that topic.

5.  In an oral presentation, discuss significant developments in your understanding of the topic of your Critical Learning Seminar.


STANDARDS:

Each essay that you write for this competency should:

  1. Focus on a unifying idea and demonstrate clear purpose or intent
  2. Maintain an identifiable structure that includes an introduction, a body, and a conclusion
  3. Be organized into paragraphs that are developed sequentially and that include facts, details, examples, reasoning and/or evidence to support the essay’s unifying idea
  4. Properly identify and cite all texts that are relied on in the essay, based on APA citation guidelines, with the student’s own ideas and words clearly distinguished from ideas and works taken from those texts
  5. Demonstrate sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, and usage in basic conformity with the conventions of formal American English. 

1.   For Criterion 1, you should focus on influences such as the following (these are only   examples):     

  1. Personal circumstances such as family, teachers, abilities/disabilities
  2. Social and cultural influences such as class, race, ethnicity, gender
  3. Societal factors such as the historical times, the pace of urban life, the mass media and other technology, war, and protest movements.

Provide sufficient detail to help the reader understand the influences you have chosen to describe as well as their context.


2.  The oral presentation that you prepare for Criterion 2 should focus on a unifying idea and demonstrate clear purpose and intent; should have an identifiable structure that includes an introduction, body, and a conclusion; and should employ language appropriate to its audience and occasion (the Critical Learning Seminar).  It should be about three to five minutes in length.

3.  The paper you write for Criterion 3 may be an assigned text that focuses on learning.  Alternatively, you may utilize a text related to the topic of your Critical Inquiry Learning Seminar that has been assigned by the instructor or discovered through your Critical Inquiry research (subject to the approval of the evaluator).

4.   For Criterion 4, the comparison should take the form of a short essay.  The essay should be integrated, not simply a mini-essay on one reading and then a mini-essay on the other.  The readings you compare can be among those the instructor assigned or those you discovered through your Critical Inquiry research (subject to the approval of the evaluator).  You should compare the two readings analytically in terms of the content presented and the point of view expressed. 

5.   For Criterion 5, the presentation should consider both the substantive knowledge you acquired and its impact on your point of view.  It can draw from readings your instructor assigned and/or readings you discovered in your Critical Inquiry research.

The presentation should focus on a unifying idea and demonstrate clear purpose and intent; should have an identifiable structure that includes an introduction, a body, and a conclusion; and should employ language appropriate to its audience and occasion (the Critical Learning Seminar).  It should be about five minutes in length.


EXAMPLE OF DEMONSTRATION:  It is expected that as part of their first semester experience at CPCS, students will demonstrate this competency in the context of the Critical Inquiry Seminar.