Technicians Can Have Tears Too
Story In College Setting
By Judith McLean
Background
Jerry, a student his early 20s enrolled in a college Industrial Maintenance Mechanical Technician, 2 year diploma Program, knew nothing about Prior Learning Assessment. He had asked for an exemption from the Coordinator in General Education based on a grade 13 science course. Because that science course was too closely related to his program of studies, we needed to try something else.
Advising Intervention
In collaboration with others, I convinced Jerry to end his demand for an exemption and pursue a grade for 2 credits from General Education through prior learning while documenting and sharing a personal event in his life. By phone I was able to help him explore how his learning from his travel experiences merged with various General Education themes. In a meeting, we discussed how he could write a narrative and participate in an oral interview to claim the learning worth 2 credits. We chatted generally about how he might proceed. I also gave him a copy of a page from the newly published Exemplars of College Writing so he could see the writing standards we expected in his learning narrative/portfolio. I showed him a map of a self-assessment tool for Essential Skills (Conference Board of Canada) to figure out how to plot his prior learning for the theme he chose. We shared phone numbers and emails to stay in contact.
A few weeks after the first meeting, I phoned Jerry. He emailed me his first draft of an essay. I reviewed his work and, in an encouraging tone, asked him for more depth of reflection and to correct the few errors I noticed. If we are learning from experience, we need to describe it, think about it, learn from it and apply that learning. I wanted him to demonstrate deeper analysis to better reflect college requirements in critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills, both oral and written. I corrected a lot of his grammar to help him improve his writing style for the balance of his work. I recommended that he prepare for a possible interview with the assessor and generate an agenda to focus the session. I also suggested that he provide a rationale for the grade he expected from his work.
Lessons Learned:
Technician students don’t do much writing, and most of their subject matter covers boilers and panels, not people and personal growth. Jerry needed to know
- why events were important to him and to his reader (younger traveller?),
- how he changed after his experiences,
- how relationships during his travels impacted his character building and to describe any behaviour pattern changes since his travels
I needed to guide him more vigorously towards ‘increased insight and self-awareness.’ Jerry would have benefited from more clarity in direction, more guidance and a sample piece of reflective writing. As his advisor, I could have tried to help him clarify that he comprehended my advice as most of my experience was with more mature learners or adults eager to discover themselves in self awareness projects. This assessment is still in progress. I welcome other insights from other advisors.
Something to consider:
I refer to Saskatchewan Learning (2005) A Journey of Self Discovery, Facilitator’s guide to reflection and portfolio development, Regina.
www.sasklearning.gov.sk.ca/branches/institutions/rpl/
One could be guided to ‘dig deeper for Knowledge (what a person knows), Skills (what a person can do) and Attitudes (values and principles reflected in one’s behaviour)’ (p.11).