Week 2 – Discussion

Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

Elevator Speech<

An elevator speech is an excellent way to convey your skills while networking and seeking employment. Typically, an elevator speech is a one-minute summary of who you are, why you are qualified, and what you have to offer the organization or industry. A brief sales pitch will ensure that you are prepared to discuss your career goals whenever the opportunity presents itself. Some examples of where you could use your elevator speech are at a networking event, during a job interview, or in a social setting. For this assignment, imagine that you are attending a networking event with your peers from your class. Remember that many of your peers are not in the same program you are, so you will need to be thorough yet concise.

To prepare for this discussion:

• Watch The Elevator Pitch (Links to an external site.) Career Spots video.
• Script out a one-minute sales pitch that is tailored toward your chosen position from the Ashford Multigenerational Center Job Board (Links to an external site.).
• Record your elevator speech. To do this, you will use a platform called Screencast-o-matic (Links to an external site.). You may want to watch the tutorials (Links to an external site.) before you get started. Here are tutorials for Getting Started (Links to an external site.) and Saving (Links to an external site.) your recording. Canvas will accept recordings saved as .mp4 format.
• You can alternately record your video directly in the Canvas discussion forum’s Rich Content Editor. Here is a tutorial (Links to an external site.).

In your initial post:

• Share your video. Here are instructions for uploading (Links to an external site.) your video to the Canvas discussion forum from Screencast-o-matic. If you record your video directly in the discussion forum window, you will have limited editing capabilities but you won’t need to upload it.

Here is an example of what an elevator speech might look like:

Sample Elevator Speech

Hi, my name is John, and I am a student at Ashford University completing my bachelor’s degree in education studies. For the past five years, I have worked as an instructional aide at ABC Elementary, where I was able to work with many different grades and subjects. My principal then gave me the chance to work with the third-grade team, and I am enjoying the curriculum and the students. Because of this experience, I now know that technology and differentiation are essential parts of K-6 education, and I am looking for a school where I can support that vision as a classroom teacher.

Guided Response:

Listen to two of your peers’ elevator speeches, and comment on how well they presented the following information:

• Who they are
• Why they are qualified
• What they have to offer the organization or industry

Do you think your peer would be called in for the interview? Why or why not? Share at least two suggestions for them to enhance their Elevator Speech.