4 Sample Finding Your Place Assignments
In the pages that follow, you will find four potential assignments for use with the Finding Your Place Podcast Series. Feel free to use any of these however you see fit, or to create modified versions of the assignments to better suit your students.
The Self-Interviewing Assignment:
One of the powerful features of the Finding Your Place podcast is hearing how student producers responded in their own voices to questions about the college experience. Much of what you hear from the student producers comes from them holding a microphone in front of them in a quiet room and answering questions about college. The assignment here can be used at the beginning of your semester to give your students the opportunity to participate in something like the process used by the student producers. The assignment features writing rather than recording but other than that it is very similar to the kinds of reflective work done by the student producers in the podcast.
The Audio Introduction Assignment:
Audio recordings like those found in the podcast offer a powerful point-of-entry into the lives of our students. This assignment taps into that power. Basically, students call your office and record a message about themselves. You listen to these recordings to learn more about who your students are and what they need from the course. Some instructors elect to play these in class (with permission of course). Instructors with audio editing experience may wish to pull out, for example, one powerful comment per student in the class and play a collection of sounds (again with permission). The most common use of this assignment, however, is for you to simply listen to your students as they share some of their thoughts about college. Students could be given credit for participation but should not be graded on the content. The assignment is best used by instructors whose campus phones make recordings that come to email and can be easily downloaded. This assignment probably wouldn’t be used with the Self-Interviewing Assignment, as those assignments are quite similar.
The Journal Response Assignment:
If you are looking for an assignment to keep students active with some or all of the episodes of the podcast, this writing assignment may be of value. Students can be asked to turn these in electronically or to bring hard copies to class and put into small groups to discuss the content. In some way, however, the assignment should produce both connection to the podcast episode and some kind of class dialogue.
The Making Connections Assignment:
Student producers in this series really benefited from their connections and interviews with faculty and staff. Having your students go out and interview others on campus can expand their support networks and the comfort zones while bringing the lessons of the series full circle. You probably already know this, but it can be helpful to let support staff and center directors know in advance that students may be soon approaching them to complete this assignment. We’ve included three potential options with this assignment for students to share the result of their visits – use or revise these options to suit your needs. We also just include a reminder here that students may be discussing confidential issues with staff, and that they certainly have the right to privacy when it comes to the content of these visits when personal matters are discussed.
Potential Simplified Grading Rubric for these Assignments:
Check Plus: You’ve done all the parts of the assignment. You make specific connections to the podcast episodes when requested. Your responses, descriptions and/or explanations are very clear and insightful.
Check: These are just fine. Not exceptional, but fine. Clear, understandable responses. Adequate reflection, and your insights are likely to be useful for classroom conversation.
Check Minus: Responses are unclear or have several minor problems (typos, surface-level discussion, etc.). Activities or questions have been missed, or you’ve done the very minimum to pass the assignment. Let’s talk about your work here.
