Description:

Liberal arts students develop career competencies through their academic courses and co-curricular experiences. However, we know from employers that students, particularly liberal arts students, need to improve their ability to articulate and translate these competencies within a professional context. Reflect, Articulate, Translate, Evaluate—or RATE™ —is a digital self-assessment tool developed by the University of Minnesota (UMN) College of Liberal Arts (CLA). RATE™ helps students develop awareness of what they are learning, articulate the value of what they are learning, and see how that learning can translate to the career competencies of their liberal arts education. More than 18,000 students have completed over 34,000 RATEs™ across every one of the 32 academic departments in the largest college at an R1 university, embracing this process and dramatically improving their ability to move from career competence to career readiness. RATE™ encompasses four crucial steps of a metacognitive learning process: reflect, articulate, translate, and evaluate. 1. Reflect on the curricular or co-curricular experience 2. Articulate how those experiences helped them develop competencies 3. Translate how those competencies are of value in professional contexts 4. Evaluate their level of readiness in those competencies Students connect a curricular or co-curricular experience to the development of a particular competency. Their responses to these prompts can be written or videotaped. The reflection step encourages students to record what happened in the experience. The articulation step allows students to talk or write about the development of the competency and how they acquired it as part of the experience. The translation step challenges the student to think about how they would take the competency outside the context in which it was learned or acquired and to deploy it in a professional context. Finally, the evaluate step of RATE™ is made up of ten self-assessment measures developed specifically to help students understand their level of proficiency in a competency and show their development over time. The measures have demonstrated great psychometric properties, including test-retest reliability and external validity. The measures are presented to students as a questionnaire that assesses their level of achievement in the respective competency and gives feedback about their level of mastery (novice, intermediate, advanced) along with specific suggestions on what aspect of the competency they did particularly well and what aspects are most in need of improvement. Individual RATEs™ are stored in student accounts creating a record for students allowing them to track their development throughout their education and to reference later as they prepare to interview for jobs or graduate school. RATE™ is one tool that is part of a broader Career Readiness Initiative in the College of Liberal Arts, supporting an intentional and consistent conversation with 14,000 undergraduate students about how their liberal arts education prepares them for future career success. As faculty embed career readiness into their courses, they can leverage RATE™ to help students connect their course to the development of competencies by directly integrating RATE™ through CLA’s Learning Management System, Canvas. Student RATE™ responses are viewable to faculty and have provided insight into the competencies students are developing in their courses.

Audience:

Career Services

Level:

Intermediate

Track:

Technology Solutions

Type:

SMARTtalk

Main Speaker:

Judy Anderson, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota

Additional Speakers: