Applied Studies reflective report assignments are an opportunity to engage with your training in the liberal arts and in the workplace; to master competencies as an effective learner by reflecting on your learning objectives and practical skill development by drawing connections between these and your academic training.
Academic Plan
Build your Academic Plan
Monthly Reports
Your first monthly assignment is a Learning Reflection Report. This report requires you to identify related academic training and employment or volunteer experience. You will set learning objectives and identify active steps to achieve your goals. You will describe how this course will impact your short and long-term academic and professional objectives.
Monthly reports #2 and #3 are expected to be a minimum of 750 words (or equivalent if you negotiate a different report format with your Instructor). In each report, it is important that you reflect on your progress toward your learning objectives, summarize your activities, analyze your skill development (provide detailed examples as part of your thoughtful evaluation), and track your progress. Be sure to make connections between your experience and your academic training wherever possible.
Monitor Visit
The monitor visit is an opportunity to engage with your employer and Applied Studies Instructor in guided conversation at the mid-point of your course. You will demonstrate knowledge about your role and responsibilities in the workplace, articulate how you are progressing toward your learning objectives, discuss the skills you are developing, and receive feedback.
Renowned educational theorist David Kolb described his experiential learning model as a loop whereupon an “effective learner” would achieve a “mastery” of competencies and skills through experience, reflection, conceptualization, and experimentation. He recognized that in our “rapidly changing world,” students “requir[e] a continued commitment to lifelong learning and development”, and that only a liberal arts education could offer “an educational approach that integrates personal experience and practical application with perceptive appreciation and understanding of concepts, and in so doing... the development of all of these competencies”
Fry, Ronald, and David Kolb. "Experiential learning theory and learning experiences in liberal arts education." New directions for experiential learning 6 (1979): 79.