Casey Schultz - November Monthly Summary

Casey Schultz – November Monthly Summary

            I would have to say that November was, by far, our most successful month as a group. We were able to complete our program evaluations and have just finished our program demonstration. Our communication was better than it has been all semester. We seem to have worked out all the issues we have had to come together for a great final product.

            For my portion of the program evaluation, I went to my former instructor, Sarah Haley. Sarah is a professor and academic advisor for the Honors College at Ball State University. I know that she has developed multiple syllabi in the past and I thought she would be a wonderful person to have evaluate our program design. The Honors College also has a course called “Honors 100” that matches six or seven new freshman with an upperclassman mentor to acclimate them to campus and how to maneuver the different offices throughout the university. Mentors in the program must design a syllabus and I know from my experience as a mentor that Sarah works closely with the Honors 100 program.

            All of our evaluators provided wonderful feedback on the program. I think that the most promising part was how few corrections they sent back to us. It made me feel much more confident in the program that we designed when I saw that it was not ripped to shreds by our evaluators.

            The final project was, I think, a bit of a challenge. None of us have had much experience with Prezi, but we knew that it creates a final product that is more interactive and aesthetically pleasing than PowerPoint. After much trial and error, I figured out how to navigate the website and was fairly pleased with our final product. I think that in the future, I will be much more confident with Prezi and will be able to utilize it in many of my courses that I take throughout my time in the graduate program. Compiling the final project demonstration and the abstract gave me yet another chance to look over what we have created throughout the semester. I have had so much fun developing our course, “Reflections on Life and Careers,” that it has inspired me to develop a course syllabus for another course that I am currently taking. I have not had much desire to do any kind of teaching in the future, but if there are opportunities to teach programs like the one our group has developed, I think I may be excited to participate.