Experiential Learning Portfolio – Autobiographical Learning Essay.

Assignment: Autobiographical Learning Essay – Would to obtain an essay to serve as a guide for my learning portfolio. I will provide additional documentation (resume, goal statement etc… to help draft the essay)

The Autobiographical Learning Essay (ALE) provides a mechanism for students to describe and explain the transformation of their experiences into college-level learning. It draws information from experiential resume, goal statement, resume, reference letters and any other parts of the portfolio and enables students to elaborate on their learning in essay form.
At the end of the ALE students articulate the connections between academic knowledge and what they have learned on-the-job and/or in the community. Please review the list of Academic Disciplines and corresponding areas at the end of this module and carefully select the disciplines that correspond to your experiential learning. When students complete this module, they should have achieved the following:

Utilized the information from their Learning Assessment Worksheet as an outline for the Autobiographical Learning Essay.

Critically reflected on and described their learning in the essay keeping in mind Kolb’s model and the directives for writing outlined in this module.

Analyzed and evaluated their learning and related it to academic disciplines at the end of the essay.

The essay has a specific structure that is clearly described and illustrated through directives and written samples. The primary task is to demonstrate to a committee of faculty evaluators that college-level learning has been attained and can be equated to academic disciplines. Therefore, it is important for students to clearly understand that the learning experience components and competencies outlined in their Learning Assessment Worksheets can be used to develop their essays. A number of ways to approach the actual writing of the ALE are discussed in this section.

First, good writing begins with good thinking. Students should use their worksheet and Kolb’s model as a platform for reflecting on and analyzing the transformation of experiences to learning.
It should be emphasized from the beginning that evaluators are interested in students’ learning acquired in adulthood. Consequently, essays should describe post-high school experiences. The writing of the essay can be approached in five steps: 1) pre-writing, 2) planning, 3) drafting, 4) revising, and 5) editing and proofreading explained in the next sections.

Step 1. Pre-Writing
Writing, as noted earlier, is intrinsically tied to thinking. Writing breeds ideas; it does not simply express already-existing thoughts. When students feel they have nothing to say, they can often use writing to generate ideas and “to write themselves into meaning.” Two of the most common pre-writing techniques are brainstorming and clustering which have been previously discussed in Module 4 on the LAW. Students may use the ideas generated by these techniques to create a plan for writing their first draft.

Step 2. Planning.
Once students know which positions and tasks they want to include, they may want to build an outline to structure their writing. Since most of the organizing and categorizing have already been accomplished in the LAW, the LAW can be an ideal foundation for constructing a working outline. The outline is better viewed as a series of signposts jogging the writer’s memory and guiding the way rather than as a strict framework.
Step 3. Writing the Draft
Once an outline or some other kind of preliminary plan has been established students should adapt the composition of their first draft to the detailed format. Outlined next. It is important that special attention be paid to this format.

A. Introduction
In one or two paragraphs, students introduce themselves with information they think readers might need to know before presenting their first post-high school position. They may want to include a brief personal background such as place of birth, family history, or childhood hobbies and interests. Students should aim at integration. Ideally, they should be careful in selecting information that has some bearing on the course of their work history. For example, in the sample essay in Appendix B, the student points to her teenage preoccupation with fashion as the motivation for attending college and for entering her first position in retail clothing.

B. Body
The body of the essay follows a chronological format, past to present rather than the reverse chronological order of the Resume and LAW. Following the description of learning from the first post high school position, the writer should continue forward to the most recent position. Like the LAW, however, work experiences and competencies are arranged around each successive position.
Since the function of the essay is to demonstrate college-level learning, logical, well-constructed paragraphs in the essay will best show both competencies and learning. Competencies should be presented in the first few sentences of each paragraph as topic sentences that relay generalized conclusions based upon the students’ examination and analysis of concrete experiences in the workplace. The rest of each paragraph is then dedicated to supporting a claim about a competency with concrete examples of tasks and duties that exemplify this competency.
In the Sample Paragraph offered below, students are given a model to follow. Note that the structure moves from general to specific and equally demonstrates both “What You Learned” and “What You Did.” Again, as stated earlier, in order to complete Kolb’s learning cycle, students must make certain to balance concrete experiences with analysis of those experiences. Students may want to conclude a paragraph describing a competency with a brief description of its future application, that is, “How You Applied It.” The structure of the paragraph is outlined below and is followed by the Sample Paragraph.

Paragraph Structure
Topic Sentence = What You Learned (a Competency such as Administration
or Critical Thinking)
Concrete Examples and Explanations of that Learning = What You Did (a Learning Experience Component or task/responsibility)
Concrete Example of its Application = How You Applied It (in work, in the community, etc.)
Students Please notice that the competency learned is stated clearly at the beginning in the topic sentence below (underlined in this sample for illustrative purposes only). The competency is followed by commentary and concrete examples and ends with application of concrete examples to illustrate what was done to attain that competency.

Sample Paragraph
The key to effective management is communication. After all, the manager is the link between the employee and the company. The manager is the one who conveys how plans and policies coming from above are to be interpreted into workable goals for the staff. As a restaurant manager for Burger King Corporation, one instance I remember well illustrates the importance of keeping the lines of communication open between you and employees as well as between you and upper-management. It was my second year as a manager. I was really pretty young at the time in more ways than I care to mention. I was so nervous; I thought that sooner or later someone was going to figure out that I was not prepared for so much responsibility.
In one of our corporate staff meetings, I was given the unpleasant task of implementing new policy pertaining to employee tardiness and other “delinquencies.” I knew that I had one particular employee with a long history of problems with tardiness, but whom the entire crew very well liked. I also knew that she had several responsibilities being the single parent of two small children. I decided to talk to her first. After approaching her in a non-aggressive way with a brief inquiry after her family, I soon learned that she drove both her children to different schools, each across town, before starting her shift at 8:15 am. After expressing my sympathy, I expressed my concern about her tardiness, offering her a possible solution. I would talk to my supervisor about allowing her a more flexible morning schedule. She, in turn, expressed a sincere willingness to solve the problem and to be prompt in the future. After approaching my supervisor with her case, he agreed that these were special circumstances that required some adjustments. I was commended for my initiative and insight in managing my staff and was able to retain a productive employee and create good morale among the rest of my crew.”
Students should avoid “padding” or “filling” the essay. Instead, they should be selective in choosing examples of their learning in each position. They might aim at selecting only those tasks or projects that seem most representative of the highest levels of learning. For example, if a student believes she has learned communication skills in her job as a manager, she might choose to emphasize and expand on her role as editor of the company newsletter rather than focus on her task of writing company memos. The student’s advisor can be of assistance in helping students discern these differences.
Students in the first stages of the writing process often substitute analysis or the presentation of an idea with a description of a sequence of events. While the ALE may follow a narrative format as it expands on each of the student’s consecutive positions, the competencies learned are what truly give shape to the tasks within each position and not the order in which students performed the tasks. Not all paragraphs need to develop a competency. Transitional paragraphs serve to offer important personal events or relocations, as well as serving as transitions between various positions, promotions, and/or job changes. Again, the Model Essay in the Appendix should serve as an adequate guideline.

C. Conclusion
In keeping with one of the purposes of the ALE, namely that of earning credits within discipline areas, students should end their essay with a clear statement of the discipline areas (Module # 4) in which they wish their learning to be allocated. They should also include the percentage of total credits allotted to each area. For example, I would like 50% of my earned credits to go in the academic discipline of General Administration because I undertook the reorganization of my department resulting in time and money saved for my organization, etc.….

Step 4. Revising
Although revision is the most critical stage of the writing process, it is often confused with editing or proofreading. Unlike this last stage of writing that involves reviewing for errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar, revision involves making substantive changes in the form and content of your writing. Revision means quite literally, “seeing again.” Students will want to reassess their writing, making sure it reflects what they want it to say. That may include changing paragraphs around, eliminating sections altogether, giving their sentences more variety, and adding transitions.

Step. 5. Editing and Proofreading
After revisions have been made, students are ready to re-read their final draft for editing and proofreading. Students are preparing the text to meet the “correctness” we usually associate with a polished piece of writing. Conventional standards require writers to look for and correct misspellings, misused or missing commas and other punctuation, weak sentence structure, and to review for mechanical errors such as capitalization of proper names and underlining or italicizing book titles. When all editing is complete, the final manuscript will be ready to proofread for typographical errors. Writers often overlook what to others are glaring errors, largely because they are so familiar with their own writing that their eye simply “fills in” the flaw. Moreover, while many word-processing programs contain spelling and grammar tools, they cannot, for example, detect homonyms or missing words.
Please review the Academic Discipline chart with Areas in the next section to help you conclude your essay. (See attached sample)

ACADEMIC DISCIPLINES AND AREAS

DISCIPLINE:
GENERAL ADMINISTRATION AREAS:
Human Resources
Management
Supervision

Autobiographical Learning Essay Additional documents will follow:
Resume
Goal Statement
Experiential Resume
Other documents