Appraise Your Progress

 Instructions

You should have identified, developed, and refined your skills as a graduate-level learner in this course. This assignment serves as a reflection of what you learned during this course and helps you to develop your vision further for future learning and growth. The reflective practice of your own learning will serve you well as you move closer to becoming an independent scholarly writer and researcher.

Research shows that your prior school experiences as a student influence your views of learning and the types of skills and habits you develop that help or hinder your learning ability. Therefore, reflecting on your K-12 and/or college educational experiences will help you become more aware of your strengths and skills to-date, as well as your perceived challenges and skills you need further developed.

First, think about your earlier (K-12) educational experience. Reflect upon ways you were treated; injustices; or positive experiences with teachers, peers, or administration—anything you feel that has affected your current outlook on learning and may cause an emotional reaction. For instance, where you criticized harshly once in an assignment and that criticism still affects your ability to use constructive criticism now to improve your learning? This should be an introspective summary/reflection on your memories of learning across your educational experiences that involve all of the topics in this course (e.g., time management, writing/grammar/APA, etc.).

Then, the second part of this assignment is to review how and what you learned/are learning currently. This reflection should include your current experiences and how you make sure you are an active agent in your learning process (e.g., did you read all of the suggested material? Did you seek help when needed? Did you learn from the assignments and try to use the strategies in your learning? Did you read review comments and incorporate them into the subsequent assignments? Etc.).

Make sure your reflection paper includes what you learned from each assignment (make sure to include the professor’s feedback, resources from the course, and your work) and what skills you feel you still need to work on. Organize this paper by week with headings such as Week 1, Week 2, etc. For each week, your reflection must consist of the following information (every week does not need to answer all of the questions, but collectively all of the questions must be answered):

1. When was a time that you felt you developed ineffective study habits/learning skills (such as watching TV while studying)? Why? How does this affect your current growth as a graduate-level learner?


2. How often during the day did/do you spend doing activities that were unproductive or a waste of time and hindered your learning (e.g., watching TV, social media, video games, etc.)?


3. What strengths (including writing, APA, research/library skills, and learning strategies) have you developed throughout your schooling to be successful in your educational experiences? How did you learn these strategies? Did someone mentor you? Was that mentoring experience positive or negative? Was there ever a time when these strategies were not successful? What did you do?


4. What challenges or difficulties have you faced in your education so far? Why do you think they were challenges? What was the outcome? Did you overcome the challenges? Did you figure it out on your own or did someone guide you?


5. Were you ever taught or mentored on specific strategies for learning, such as time management? APA? Scholarly writing? Research skills? How has this affected your graduate work?


6. In a separate paragraph after your responses organized by week, summarize each learning outcome for this course (e.g., time management) and indicate what you learned from it, and what you still need to improve.


7. Identify the three most valuable pieces of information you learned during this course and how it will help you to succeed in your program.


8. Determine three areas you still need to strengthen to do better in future graduate courses. Discuss how you are currently working on improving those areas (be specific—e.g., webinars, reading a scholarly writing manual, etc.).

Length: 6-10 pages, not including title and reference pages

References: Support your assignment with at least three scholarly resources.