Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.
There will be six self-reflection activities this semester. Each of these activities has you respond to questions asking you to connect course material to your own experiences of conflict and negotiation.
- Here’s What I Want You to Do
- Here’s Why I Want You to Do It
- Here’s How to Do It
- Here’s How You’ll Earn Negotiation Experience Points
- Specifications for Self-Reflections
- Using Philosopher’s Stones
- Collaboration & Academic Integrity
You may be surprised at what you learn about yourself as you do these self-reflection activities!
Photo: Ron Batzdorff / NBC.
Here’s What I Want You to Do
Each self-reflection activity asks you to respond to a list of questions. These questions have you reflect in different ways on how what you are learning in this course connects to your own real-life experiences. Your goal for each of these activities is to demonstrate your understanding of the course material while making a good faith effort to apply those concepts to better understand your behavior and that of others during conflict.
These are meant to be relatively straightforward activities that are not particularly difficult. After all, you are being asked to talk about (what I hope is) your favorite topic: yourself! The challenge here is to remain focused and thorough in answering all the assigned self-reflection questions while not getting sidetracked with inessential details.
Otherwise, your self-reflections should use APA-style citations to cite all your sources (this includes the required course readings), acknowledge any assistance (this includes assistance received from me outside of our regular class meetings), and otherwise conform to the formatting requirements.
Please use the templates for the self-reflections. These templates are set up to satisfy all the formatting requirements, including a blank cover page for you to complete.
Most importantly, self-reflections without a properly filled out Commitment to Academic Integrity Form will not be read and will automatically earn 0 negotiation experience points.
Photo: Justin Lubin / NBC.
Here’s Why I Want You to Do It
The purpose of these self-reflection activities is pretty straightforward: they ask you to apply what you are learning about conflict and negotiation to your life. Such reflection is absolutely essential for improving your skills in negotiation and conflict resolution.
As such, the self-reflection activities continually push you on your path towards achieving all four learning outcomes for this course:
| 1. | Apply models explaining the nature of conflict and the process of negotiation, |
| 2. | Compare and contrast different strategies for negotiation and conflict resolution, |
| 3. | Reflect on and develop your own approaches to negotiation and conflict resolution, and |
| 4. | Transform conflict into an opportunity for joint problem solving with others. |
Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.
Here’s How to Do It
When they are posted, be sure to read the questions for each self-reflection activity carefully, making sure you understand what each is asking you. This will ensure that your answers are comprehensive while demonstrating your understanding of and reflection on the relevant course material. For instance, be sure to define any and all course terminology you use in your responses.
Please, though, don’t create extra work for yourself by regurgitating information or performing tasks not relevant to the activity’s questions.
Since your responses should demonstrate your understanding of and reflection on conflict and negotiation, please keep direct quotation to a minimum. That is, quoting directly from the readings would show that you know where to locate relevant information, but it does not itself demonstrate that you understand what it means or have reflected on its significance. So be sure to explain course material in your own words.
Finally, familiarize yourself with my expectations, which consist of a detailed list of specifications, for the self-reflection activities. These should give you a further insight into how to do well on your self-reflections.
As always, if you have any confusions about how to succeed on these self-reflection activities, let me know!
Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.
Here’s How You’ll Earn Negotiation Experience Points
Each self-reflection activity is worth 450 negotiation experience points.
If a self-reflection satisfies all of that activity’s specifications, then it is marked “Accepted” and earns all 450 points. However, if a self-reflection fails to satisfy any one of those specifications, then it is marked “Incomplete” and earns 0 points.
Partial credit is not awarded. So be sure that your self-reflections follow all the specifications very carefully.
Photo: Justin Lubin / NBC.
Specifications for Self-Reflections
In order to be Accepted (and earn the full 450 negotiation experience points) a self-reflection activity must satisfy all of the following eight specifications:
| SR1: |
Make a serious effort to answer each and every reflection question as clearly and completely as possible.
There is no expectation of perfection here. Just make that real effort to answer all those questions. |
| SR2: |
Illustrate your major points with real (not merely hypothetical) examples of your behavior from your life outside of class and/or from your experiences during our in-class activities.
I will be the only one reading your self-reflections, and I will not share them with anyone else. That said, be sensitive about what you would and would not like me to know about yourself. |
| SR3: |
Break up your longer answers into multiple paragraphs so they are easier to understand and follow.
A good rule of thumb here is that a paragraph should not be longer than a full page. Even better: no paragraph is longer than half a page. |
| SR4: |
Strictly follow the specified word count. (The precise word count may vary from self-reflection to self-reflection.)
The cover page, title information, references, and acknowledgments, do not count. |
| SR5: | Number your responses to each question. |
| SR6: |
Be in your own words.
In other words, please paraphrase material without directly quoting me, the text, or any other sources. |
| SR7: | Follow the formatting requirements, which include having a properly filled out Commitment to Academic Integrity Form. To help you with this, please use the templates for the self-reflection activities. |
| SR8: | Use APA-style citations to cite all your sources (this includes the required course readings) and acknowledge any assistance (this includes help from classmates, your friends and family, Center for Excellence in Writing (CEW), artificial intelligence (AI) tools, as well as from me). |
If your submission fails to satisfy any one of those specifications, then it will be marked as Incomplete (and earn 0 negotiation experience points).
Photo: Dean Holland / NBC.
Using Philosopher’s Stones
The following two philosophical powers apply to the self-reflection activities:
Time Stop (SR)
Cost: 1 philosopher’s stone.Area of Effect: 1 self-reflection activity.
Duration: Up to 48 hours.
You select 1 self-reflection activity and give up 1 philosopher’s stone. You then gain a 48-hour extension for completing that activity
If you have enough stones, you may use this power multiple times for additional 48-hour extensions on the same self-reflection activity.
Borrowed Knowledge
Cost: 6 philosopher’s stones.Area of Effect: 1 self-reflection activity.
Duration: Instantaneous.
You select 1 self-reflection activity and give up 6 philosopher’s stones. You then gain the full 450 negotiation experience points for that activity.
You may do Borrowed Knowledge at any time during the semester. For example, in week 7 you may use your stones on a self-reflection activity from week 2. For that reason, I encourage you to save your philosopher’s stones until the end of the semester. At that point, you may then decide whether to use them on any self-reflection activities.
Photo: Colleen Hayes / NBC.
Collaboration & Academic Integrity
Since the self-reflection activities are meant to assess your progress in achieving the learning outcomes, I expect you to write up your self-reflections on your own without resorting to artificial intelligence (AI) tools to do these for you. (Perhaps not too surprisingly, AI tools do a pretty bad job in completing these sorts of self-reflection activities.) After all, I am primarily interested in your reflections about what you are learning in this course!
Self-reflections are not group activities; you must write them up on your own. Let me know if you are struggling and I’ll gladly help!
However, I actually encourage you to talk to each other about these questions. You might also do so with friends and family. Reflecting on those questions, and seeing the different ideas of others, is a great way to learn and grow! Just be sure that you write out the results of those conversations on your own and in your own words.
Above all, please be honest if you do receive any assistance or use the ideas of others. This includes using AI tools. In any of those cases, be sure to:
- Note the assistance you received on the cover page’s Commitment to Academic Integrity Form, and
- Properly cite that assistance and/or acknowledge it at the end of your self-reflection.
If anyone asks you for help, direct them to me instead. I’ll be glad to help them out!