Creating this ePortfolio was therapeutic for me. It allowed me to see, all in one place, how much work my peers and I put into this semester in order to maximize our learning experiences. My portfolio includes many pictures and infographs, as I am a visual learner and enjoy seeing images that connect to what I'm learning. I chose images and quotes that resonated with me and that I thought connected to my jounrey of understanding education through curriculum. Throughout my portfolio are references to my women's college education, whether it be in the introduction or in the colleges I used for my case studies.

My women's college experience was an impactful one. It was the first time in my educational journey that I felt I had a voice and could really connect with my teachers and mentors. The institution and her professional staff encouraged me and challenged me, and are the reason I am now pursing a degree in Higher Education. I thrived in that type of open learning environment where I was surrounded by not only intelligent, passionate women, but by men who believed in female empowerment and the voices of their students. The image at the top of this page, which reads "The best is yet to come," was chosen because of its relativity to my thoughts and feelings about curriculum development and about my professional life. The paradigms of college teaching are shifting, slowly but surely, and it will greatly benefit students not only in the here and now, but in the long-term.

Engaging in the case studies wfor this course as truly an act of analyzation. It gave me a chance to do research on colleges at which I might like to one day work, and was helpful in putting our learning about core curricula, syllabi, and service-learning programs into context. With core curricula in particular, I learned that many colleges seem to utilize the same learning outcomes, which include knowledge of human cultures and the physical and natural world (coursework in the sciences, social sciences, diversity, histories, arts, and humanities), intellectual and practical skills (courses in reasoning, written and oral communication, and quantitative literacy), and personal and social responsibility (diversity classes, foreign languages and histories, non-European/non-Anglophone coursework). The one area of these essential learning outcomes that is not referenced much, if at all, in the core curriculums of the institutions I looked at is integrative learning. I think these institutions have that goal as a summative one, hoping that the other requirements would create advanced accomplishment across general and specified studies. The colleges I chose to examine seem to be making curriculums in between the old and new paradigms of college teaching (Fink, 2013). The focus of college instruction is shifting from a focus on memorization, authoritative learning set-ups where the teacher is the only source of knowledge, and only striving to earn a degree, to relatability and application, shared power between students and faculty, and an emphasis on life-long learning. I think the major area in which college curriculums, at least most of the colleges I researched, are struggling is in student growth goals. Many of the curricula make it easy for students to set goals of completing requirements and achieving a degree, but not creating goals of life-long learning.

Nilson was especially helpful in the creation of my syllabus (Nilson, 2010). My biggest apprehension was creating a syllabus that would make sense to me as a professor but not to students who would hypothetically be following it. One of the assessments/assignments I chose to implement was a final learning plan. I got this idea from Fink, who describes the learning plan as students building a learning agenda and strategy and then receiving feedback on their plan.  Fink uses this as a way to promote significant learning in that it guides students to become self-directed learners (Fink, 2003).  I thought this would be a perfect culminating assignment for the end of the course because it would give students the power to direct their own learning and take ownership of that learning. I also struggled with creating the course calendar. Because the other pieces of the syllabus were no-brainers (except for the learning goals), I had to really think about how to use my class time wisely and ensure that my original learning goals were being acknowledged in the planning of my learning activities.

The most challenging part of our course, for me at least, was creating the curriculum modules for Marquette. It challenged my peers and I to synthesize and utilize everything we learned about learning goals, significant learning activities, service-learning, and reflection, and apply it to creating online modules for students to actually actually engage with during their service-learning experience. The most difficult part for me specifically was figuring out how to make all the different parts a cohesive, understandable unit, without knowing what types of classes or service-learning partnership the potential students would be experiencing. Our resources on learning goals made it easier for us to create objectives that are measurable, realistic, and will encouraged us as educators to create learning activities that would stick with the potential students long after their service-learning experience was over.

I think more now about how professors get advanced degrees in their fields, with little to no training on how to effectively teach, design courses, or construct syllabi.  I feel privileged that I had the opportunity to spend a couple of weeks creating a syllabus step-by-step with the help of my peers, a knowledgeable instructor, and some really effective graphic organizers, which is way more than many professors are afforded.  I am also more conscious now of the learning outcomes on my current syllabi and how they fit in with the assessments and activities we do in my class as a student (Fink, 2003) than I ever was before this project, where I developed an understanding of how much effort is takes to create an integrated course and an integrated syllabus. I also have a new understanding for how difficult it is to create experiences that are meaningful and impactful for students even when they are no longer in the class. It can be difficult to align goals and practices to create those learning experiences, and I can now understand why it is such a challenge to get experienced professors to change up their gameplans and teaching strategies.

I enjoyed getting to engage in these activities before I need to utilize them as a professional. It is encouraging to see this field as an emerging one that is dedicated to ensuring that students receive the best educational experience possible. I feel more prepared now to create programs and understand curriculums as a student affairs practitioner, and know that I have the resources and knowledge to make those programs as effective as possible.

References

Fink, L.D. (2003). Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to developing college courses. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Nilson, L.B. (2010). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. (Ch. 13)