REFLECTIONS

Monthly News & Updates

Mar 22, 2024

Course Design Workshop April 1–22

Meet online (via Zoom)

Mondays (April 1, 8, 15, and 22)

from 10am to 4pm (Eastern)

All other days are asynchronous. Participants complete interactive learning activities in our web-based learning management system.

Learn more

But I already HAVE a course!

The Course Design Workshop isn't ONLY about designing a course, though that IS in the name. What it also offers, though, is the opportunity to work through the 21 steps of the Course Design Methodology. This process can obviously lead to a NEW and FABULOUS course but it can also be used to give a tired or older course an amazing makeover! If you're not seeing the kind of student engagement you want or are considering changing up course tasks and projects (or pretty much anything else!), the Course Design Workshop will offer you the opportunity to rework things with professional advice and input from other educators and curricula designers. Why not take a look at the steps of the Course Design Methodology (below)? We're betting there's something there to benefit EVERYONE who teaches!

A Window Worth Looking Through

Let’s take a moment to look at the Johari Window, as created by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham. The Johari Window is a cognitive psychological tool most often used in communication or team-building exercises where helping participants understand their own inclinations as well as the inclinations of others leads to increased understanding or cooperation.

(The model used in this article is based on the version available at www.mindtools.com)

In the typical Johari Window, there are four areas:

Area 1: Things about you that are known to you AND to others.

Area 2: Things about you NOT known to you but known to others; these are your blind spots.

Area 3: Things about you that you know but others do NOT; this is hidden or private information. It is often referred to as a facade.

Area 4: Things about you NOT known to you and NOT known to others.

Given the definition of these four areas, we can see how actions such as getting feedback (we ask about that which is known to others but not to us), self-discovery (asking about that which is unknown to us leads to private understanding), and self-disclosure (telling others something about ourselves that they did not know) function and are related to one another.

In general, self-knowledge expands based on feedback, shared discovery, and self-discovery (the vertical dashed line moves to the right). Self-disclosure increases the knowledge others have of the individual (the horizontal dashed line moves down).

But what about self-assessment? We think the Johari Window might be a useful model for exploring SII-Assessment (Strengths, Areas for Improvement, and Insights), especially where aspects of self-efficacy and personal development are concerned. Here's our reworked version of the model:

This model allows us to illustrate several important ideas:

Assessment-based feedback provides information that allows the vertical line separating what is known by self and what is not known by self to potentially move to the right. In other words, what OTHERS see about you and communicate to you, if understood and accepted, becomes what you understand about yourself. Thus, your self-awareness and understanding grows, decreasing your blind spot(s). Isn’t that interesting? You come to know yourself through the feedback of others!

This graphic shows why feedback can be taken so personally and why there must be a relationship of trust between assessor and assessee for an SII-Assessment to be effective. An assessor has knowledge about the individual that the individual does not have – the blind spot – and hearing that information can feel like a violation of self-concept and identity. This is something assessors must keep in mind; it is very easy to cross mentoring boundaries by offering unsolicited assessment feedback, and thereby ruining the relationship.

Self-assessment can lead to increased self-awareness, even if it isn’t shared publicly and remains private.

Insights are so powerful as a core component of SII-Assessment because not only does it expand an individual’s self-knowledge but it is a shared discovery in the fact that it was unknown to both the assessor and assessee until the assessment was conducted.

This is just us scratching the surface and seeing what we can learn from looking at SII-Assessment from a different perspective and window. We’d love to hear any thoughts you might have!

Monthly Self-Growth Tip

Being more productive is often about doing LESS instead of MORE

The best way to boost productivity is not to throw more energy and effort at whatever we're currently doing but to STOP doing the things that DETRACT from productivity.

Whether it's frequently checking email, engaging in small talk, worrying, or doom scrolling, there are myriad common behaviors and relatively mindless activities that tend to suck up energy and attention.

When we curtail those activities, we not only have more time for the things we need to do, but more time for the important things we WANT to do! Focusing our time and attention on the things that truly matter to us ensures that we treat them with the care and attention they deserve.