Mel Bellissimo |
|
Marketing Administration Graduates 1998
|
Mel Bellissimo |
|
I began working on the Marketing Career Planning course project in the spring of 2003 and the course CAP506 "Career Launching and Portfolio Development" was completed in summer 2004 and was delivered at Seneca College in the Marketing Administration program in September 2004 with approximately 125 students attending four sections of the course, once a week.
Assisting me in the process of building the course were two graduates from the Marketing Administration Program in the School of Marketing and eBusiness, Mel Bellissimo and Ophilia Davis. The concept was built on the idea that students taking this course would identify, interview and profile graduates of the MKA program in order to have a better understanding of what happens after graduation when a student goes out into the job market.
In this graduate profile project process, videos were shot for both Mel and Ophilia supported by a number of documents or artifacts they created with my guidance. These included a narration of what had happened for them in the past five years. That story was then revised and summarized into approximately ten highlights, which became a script for an on-camera interview. A shooting schedule was also made so that still shots of the students could be made in locations of their choosing. These, along with photos selected from their own private collections, came to be used to illustrate their career journey.
Both students created both hard copy portfolios and eportfolios through this process. They also updated their resumes, and created calling cards to use in future job search. The two students come from contrasting backgrounds and experiences and have different goals for the future. Power Point presentations were created to reflect their stories as examples for students who would take the course. The projects in the course would be to create portfolios, eportfolios and profiles of graduates from the Marketing program.
I realized through my own experience that having students make videos of graduates was too involved and time-consuming to be considered for a one-hour course. I experienced a series of technical difficulties, which precluded my editing Mel and Ophilia's videos until the summer of 2004. These video examples were finally ready in time for the course in the fall of 2004. Instead of requiring CAP506 students to create a video, they were asked to create a multi-media Power Point presentation by developing a number of the artifacts such as the narrated story or interview, the revised script of highlights, the shooting schedule for getting photos, and a reflective report on the process.
For me, developing the course with these two graduates was an important way to work. Through their process, I could see the benefit for future students in what I had planned. It was important to observe how the process affected them. Both Mel and Ophilia gained a fresh perspective on past experiences and on their goals for the future. They have been enriched for having gone through this process.
I have included their artifacts as resources in the course. In addition
to showing their videotaped interviews, I was also able to show their portfolios
and eportfolios to the students taking the course. I believe I will be
able to build a valuable archive of examples of marketing graduates in
time, a resource that will be helpful to future students in seeing the
reality of how they can move from the college setting to a career. While
this project did not become as technically advanced as originally proposed,
it has nonetheless produced a valuable and enriching body of work. I think
that other programs at the college could benefit from using this model
as a template for their career planning courses.
Mel's ePortfolio Mel's Profile |
|