INSTRUCTOR FACING SECTION

Assignment Overview

In Guided Explorations, students engage with short narratives authored or communicated by professionals who reflect on their career trajectory given their academic choices and experiences in college. Texts might also include critically-minded journalism about the job market, data visualizations, or short narratives about the experience of working in a field or profession. In this particular assignment, students are asked to make a connection with someone whose work they are interested in – or whom they simply admire or are curious about – and to elicit insights from that individual about how their academic experience did (or did not) lead to the development of professional skills.

Purpose/Goals/Milestones

The purpose of this assignment is for students to draw upon the memories, experiences and insights of individuals currently working in a professional field in order to prompt thinking about how academic coursework might connect to developing important professional skills. In completing this assignment, students will potentially:

• be challenged to venture outside their immediate networks in thinking about which professions they are interested in
• draw upon the wisdom and guidance of a potential role model to identify ways in which the student’s academic journey might be mapped out and taken advantage of
• dispel mythical or reductive narratives of professional work so that they can better understand what certain jobs/fields would entail
• be asked to take on a more agentic role, through inquiry and outreach, as they begin to think about what kind of work they eventually want to pursue

Materials

No texts are required for this assignment, although instructors may want to frontload this assignment with some examples of good interviewing techniques. 

Assessment Strategy

In this assignment, student learning is assessed qualitatively through a short reflection that each student will write upon holding and recording their conversation with their interviewee. In assessing the student’s work, instructors will consider:

• The quality of the questions asked in the interview by the student
• The student’s rationale for choosing the person they interviewed
• The extent to which the student followed the recommended prompts in their conversation
• Student’s willingness and ability to discuss their participant’s responses, especially regarding topics of:
  • transferable academic/professional skills
  • participant’s professional journey
  • participant’s academic trajectory
  • student’s own relevant academic choices and experiences
• Student’s willingness to raise further questions upon reflection

STUDENT FACING SECTION

Assignment Description

Instructions: Interview someone who works in a profession that you might one day be interested in pursuing, or whom you are curious about and want to learn more from. You will interview this person about their academic and professional journey, how their schooling connected to their professional development, and what skills are necessary for doing their work. Afterward, you will write a short (1-2 page) reflection about the conversation. 

Part 1: Choosing a participant

For this assignment, you should choose someone you find interesting and whom you want to learn more from. The person you interview might be someone who works in a field you aspire to enter, or it might be someone who you are curious about and want to learn from, who does not necessarily do the exact kind of professional work you are interested in. 

Instructors may have students describe their process for choosing a participant, or defend their choice in writing.

Part 2: Conducting an interview

Before you conduct your interview, you should draft questions that you are planning to ask your participant. The questions you ask should address the following topics, themes or questions:

• What specific skills the participant uses in their day-to-day work
• How, exactly, the person developed those skills 
• Examples of how those skills are used in the work
• The extent to which the person’s professional skillset can be traced back to high school, college, graduate school or job training experiences
• Specific stories or instances in which past experiences connected to the person’s present professional expertise 

Make sure you record the interview (with the person’s permission) so that you can refer back to it later. 

Part 3: Reflection

After the interview, write a short reflection on your conversation, in which you discuss the following:

• What academic skills were important in your interviewee’s professional development?
• What were some key experiences that the person had in their younger years that helped them gain the skills necessary to excel at their work now?
• What were some details in the person’s educational trajectory that unexpectedly informed their professional identity and skills today? 
• What insights or experiences did your interviewee make that resonated with you as a college student? 
• What further questions, curiosities and ideas does the interview leave you with as you continue to think about what your professional path might be?

Required Texts

N/A

How This Assignment Will Be Assessed

Your reflection will be read by the instructor, who will provide written feedback either alongside the text or afterwards (or both). The instructor will also check your list of interview questions and listen to at least a part of your conversation. Students will be given a grade for the assignment based on the following qualitative criteria:

• Appropriateness of your choice of participant
• Completion of the interview 
• Extent to which the bulletpoint questions posed in part 3 of the instructions (above) are addressed in the reflection