Week 3 – Assignment

Competencies Self-Assessment

[WLO: 2] [CLOs: 1, 3]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, review Chapters 22 through 31 of the course textbook.

The purpose of this assignment is to examine the competencies that are essential for a career in student services and to reflect on your strengths and areas of growth within these competencies. This exercise will be concluded in the Week 4 Self-Assessments Recommendations discussion, where you and your peers will comment on each other’s Self-Assessments.

This week’s textbook chapters from Part 5 focus on essential competencies (Chapters 22 through 31), which include

• Professionalism
• Multiculturalism
• Leadership
• Staffing and supervision
• Teaching and Facilitation
• Counseling and helping skills
• Advising student organizations
• Crisis management
• Designing programs for engaging differences
• Applying theories and research to practice

For this assignment, develop and submit a professional presentation meeting the following content expectations:

• Describe each of the 10 competency categories named above (at least one slide for each competency will give you at least 10 slides). In each description, be sure to include the name of the competency, what it includes, and why it is important to a career in student services.
• Identify, for each competency, those in which you show particular strength as well as those in which you require further growth and development.
• Justify your choice for one of the competencies for which you identified a need for further growth and development (one slide).
• Create an action plan using a specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goal that will help you work toward progressing in your identified area of growth within the chosen competency that you identified as a need for the further growth and development (on the same slide as the previous bullet).
• Describe how professional organizations might play a role in helping you grow professionally (on a final slide). For guidelines on using proper SMART formatting, view the video Learn to Write SMART Goals in 2 Minutes (Links to an external site.)

The Competencies Self-Assessment presentation

• Must provide the text of your narration for each slide. If you are using Microsoft PowerPoint for your presentation, use the presenter notes under each slide found in Microsoft PowerPoint to write the transcript that you will then narrate. You may also utilize the Microsoft PowerPoint recording feature (view this video for support) or use the presenter tool of your choice, such as
  • Screencast-O-Matic (Links to an external site.)
  • Jing (Links to an external site.)

If you do not choose PowerPoint for your presentation, consider using Prezi (Links to an external site.) to create your slides. Write your transcript in a Word document, upload as a separate attachment, and then use one of the presenter tools above to narrate your Prezi. You may appear on camera with your content or just have your voice recorded. You must provide text and bullet points and graphics on your slides. (Most of your content will be included in the notes section of your PowerPoint or on your Word document.)

• Must be 12 to 20 slides in length (not including title and references slides) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center (Links to an external site.)’s How to Make a PowerPoint Presentation (Links to an external site.)
• Must include a separate title slide with the following:
  • Title of presentation
  • Student’s name
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Date submitted

For further assistance with the formatting and the title page, refer to APA Formatting for Word 2013 (Links to an external site.).

• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must use at least one credible source in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • To assist you in completing the library research required for this assignment, view this Ashford University Library Quick ‘n’ Dirty (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the Ashford University Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center’s Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.)
  • Must include a separate reference slide that is formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. See the Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Ashford Writing Center for specifications.