Assignments
Covenant Assignment
To prepare for an effective serving and learning experience, we find it is important to prayerfully write out a learning and serving covenant, which describes your vision and identifies your commitment to personal disciplines and practices of prayer, work and study, and relationships. The Covenant Assignment for Certification participants is the same as that of Converge students participants. The Covenant Assignment should be a clearly articulated 100 to 200 commitment to your personal service and learning objectives for this experience. This assignment is submitted in Lesson 1.
Example: “I seek to know and to obey God’s voice. I seek to encourage others through my words, my attitude, and my actions. To do this, I commit to the following: speaking words of kindness and showing patience; sharing and being accountable to my Mentor; working faithfully and praying for the leaders and the community at the project I will be serving. I will do all of this for the sake of God’s Glory and for the furtherance of Christ’s kingdom.”
Pre-Departure Responses
Each pre-departure lesson includes a 2-point discussion board response component that you are responsible for sharing on the appropriate forum of the discussion board. Your response should be thoughtfully considered and articulated. The response is not meant to be written in formal academic writing, but it should also not be overly casual or using informal acronyms. You are responsible for posting thoughtful, reflective responses to at least two other students, unless otherwise noted. Please avoid simple statements of agreement or disagreement. Your responses should be complete ideas that build upon the posts of your peers. They should reflect a deep level of engagement with the lesson content.
Mentor Reflections
There are two mentor reflections, each worth 5 points, built into the discussion board responses during pre-departure orientation during Lessons 3 and 10. These should be clearly articulated and thoughtful reflections on the impact of your mentor relationship on your learning and preparation. This is not designed to be an evaluation of the mentor himself or herself, but a personal reflection of the experience. Describe what you have gained from the experience, what you expect from the experience, and any questions you might have for your mentor at that point.
Community Mapping Assignment for Certification Participants
The Community Mapping Assignment, worth 10 points, is an activity that helps students get acquainted with your their community and host organization. For participants in the UofN Internship Coordinator Certification Course, the Community Mapping Assignment is different. Rather than map a community or an organization, Certification participants will "map" the context in which Converge internships will serve their UofN College/Campus or Ministry Focus Area, such as Human Trafficking or Business as Mission.
Certificate participants will submit their Community Mapping Assignment before Cohort Meeting Three. You should familiarize yourself with its requirements so you may communicate early with organization leaders who can host interns. It is designed to be a preliminary activity that will result in a basic visual map of the community’s layout, infrastructure, important sites, and assets, as well as begin to point you in the direction of a topic for your final project. However, it is not designed to be a comprehensive map, as full-scale community mapping exercises tend to take months or even years to complete, not to mention extensive resources, personnel, and expertise.
The first component of this assignment is a visual map which will be presented in a digital format – perhaps as a re-creation using mapping or graphic software, an organization chart, or something as simple as a digital photograph of a map drawn by hand. You should use symbols and a key to make the map as clear as possible.
Second, you will include a brief (roughly ½ page Google Doc) reflection on what you learned from the experience, what information you gained and still hope to obtain, and how this assignment is helping you as you design your Certification Project: A Plan for Coordinating Internships.
Interview Assignment
The Interview Assignment will be completed early in the Assessment Phase. For this assignment, worth 10 points, you will design a research tool to help you obtain information leading to the development of your Final Project Proposal, your plan for coordinating internships. Your tool should be either an interview or focus group design and should use the following steps:
Plan.
Select participants and design the tool. The following components will be included in the assignment submission:
- The name(s) of the intended and actual participant(s), and for a focus group, a description of the group. (For example: UofN College Dean, Campus Leader, or Ministry Director, and School Leaders or Other Team Members.)
- A very brief rationale for the selection of the participant(s).
- A planned series of 7-10 guiding questions for your research activity.
- Be prepared with follow-up questions, knowing that you will need to adapt as appropriate when you actually conduct the research.
Example Questions:
- What are the mission, goals, and objectives of the UofN College/Campus or Ministry Focus Area?
- For what Schools and Ministries do we need to prepare to coordinate interns?
- What is our goal for this year? How many students will need internships? How many more would we like to have?
- Who is already coordinating internships?
- What organizations do we send interns to? Who is the primary contact with those organizations? Who is the primary YWAM/UofN contact to that host organization?
- Who makes final decisions to approve internship hosts for us?
Implement.
Schedule appointments with the participant(s) and conduct your interview or focus group. Make sure to take accurate notes and using quotations for exact quotes. Make sure to begin by explaining the purpose of the activity and obtaining consent for using names, quotes, and the information provided. Respect the desires of participants; ask if you may quote them. After the interview, organize the responses.
Reflect.
Finally, write a brief reflection about the activity, particularly in terms of how the information compared to your expectations. How might you adjust your plan for internship coordination? Did any themes emerge that may influence how you will design your Project: Internship Coordination Plan?
Project Proposal
At the end of the Assessment Phase, before beginning your Project, you will need to submit and gain approval for the project you would like to design. Once you feel that you have gained enough information from your research to select a focus for your Project, write a one-page proposal stating:
- A brief summary of the topic you chose and project you will design and implement
- The reason you feel that the project is relevant
- How the project will be empowering to the community and draw on its existing assets
Once you feel comfortable with the proposal, discuss it with your mentor and submit it to your supervisor and Host. Once approved, submit the proposal on the Assessment page of the Converge course.
Final Report: Your Internship Coordination Plan
For this assignment, worth 25 points, you will design and begin to implement the Project for your UofN College/Campus or Ministry Focus community. You will articulate objectives and goals, the resources you will need, and challenges you might face to implement it.
Your final report should be submitted as a document written in Google Docs. It should include the following components:
Introduction
Describing your internship coordinator learning experience and the community you are planning internships for.
Vision and Objectives
Explaining the purpose of the internships to be coordinated, how your sense of calling and/or your training have influenced it, and how it will empower the UofN or Ministry Focus community.
Project Overview
Articulating measurable goals and actions, as well as how success will be measured.
Resource Requirements
Identifying material, financial, human, and other resources required and how you will obtain them.
Description of Challenges
Anticipating potential obstacles and a plan for overcoming them.
Conclusion and Reflection
Summarizing the purpose, actions, needs, and impact of the project and describing what you have learned through your internship coordinator training. A more detailed description of each component can be found on Udemy.com.
Debrief Reflection
The Debrief Reflection is your final discussion board post, worth 5 points, and written at the end of your internship coordinator training experience. You will begin by briefly describing your experience, including a synopsis of what you did throughout each week. Share about one or two difficulties you face and anything unexpected that happened and what God taught you during this time.
