CREATING OR EXTENDING PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS —TO STUDENTS & NEWBIES

Host website, locations (Facebook; virtual), topics, purpose, governance, and meetings-with-practitioners to connect students and others moving into new careers with ideas, jobs, & personal connections;

Develop, model, create, peer-review, define-assessments, and promote the initial projects within a graduate course; follow-up with a dean letter; task later courses with revisions;

Extend to appropriate interest groups – evaluate, improve, continue, & sustain: delegate ownership and revision to a later course, seek ongoing oversight & maintenance thru badges

BENEFITS & USES Strengthen connections within

and to an organization (job searching)

Develop resource gathering; create an organizational present with the aid of a social network & virtual meetings

BADGES – reinforce, validate & value Use badges to promote, extend,

monitor, and support the endeavor; For example, badges for:

Creator of a Professional Development Day Website Organizer and Moderator Gold Star Meeting Attendee $5K Fund Raiser Bronze Star New Member Mentor (based

on resumes reviewed by practitioner, perhaps)

Facebook Organizer

Badge

Extending to the Professions (launching an ongoing “open” resource from a graduate course) This bridge-into-a-profession open resource would be initiated and originally vetted during an advanced course in a content area within a graduate course. The initial concept, design, exemplars, project criteria, links, and professional associations and the assessments for good project work could be developed as requirements within the course. The course itself may be more focused on the knowledge and understanding of the content within the course, but towards the end of the course, collaborative student teams would create a social network, website resource, and meeting environment (webinar / virtual space) that could be used to segue students into the working environment within the profession itself. Students would establish meetings with practitioners with the meeting environment, bring in presentations and speakers, and establish communication pathways to the resources and networks for these professions to which students will be moving. The intent would be (a.) to provide a pathway from the academic studies to the professions themselves and (b.) to create a rich repository of resources related the professional field, including contacts, job listings, suggestions, discussion boards, and potential mentors. During the graduate course, student teams would make initial connections with practitioners in the field making plans for them to “visit” (virtually / webinars) with students who might be moving into the field, developing the initial resource repository, and designing schedules, evaluations, analytics, and checkpoints into the open-resource system to ensure a quality experience for those who seek this bridge-into-a-profession open-resource. Reward the efforts of graduate students who continue with the project after the course ends with an Award from the Dean that establishes their extended work, however, during the design of the open resource within the graduate class, determine badges and assessments that could encourage participation both from students that are transitioning and from professionals who visit and support apprentices and newbies in their profession. Future iterations of this graduate classes could be tasked with reviewing, assessing, modifying, and revitalizing the project based on the results since the last class. Badges could be available for different tasks within the project and could be used to facilitate the ongoing support and maintenance of the project – badges can validate the many different aspects of the project that need to function properly if the open resource is to be maintained, interesting, valid, and generative. Badges could document and support key areas such as: session attendance (numbers of meetings (webinar / virtual) attended by students to learn from practitioners); professional speaker (visitors who share with students about their profession); event coordinator (students who develop professional development days for other students); maintenance/ governance (rewarding ongoing oversight of the open resource); mentoring acknowledgement (badges based on tangible support offered to students by professionals—good for their connections within their field).

EXTENDING TO THE PROFESSIONS. This higher-education initiated, student/practitioner connecting, open-resource would develop, facilitate, and promote the establishment of information and networks connecting academia to jobs in the associated professions and would create a repository of information and potential networking connections among students, newbies, and seasoned professionals. Graduate student teams, under guidance from the course instructor, would create and disseminate the original open resource, finding virtual and webinar-based ways make the personal connection across geography. The most worthy networks developed would be voted to remain beyond the course; a letter or award from the dean could ensure initial continued ownership. Badging could identify the most valued aspects of the work, help make the project sustainable, and ensure ongoing professional-development meetings and networked connections. Courses in later year could be tasked with reviewing, updating, and improving the resource.