Career Progress Initiating, Inspiring, Leading Essay

Career Progress Initiating, Inspiring, Leading - Essay Example When I worked as an engineer at Intel from 2001 to 2004, I inspired my mediocre team into a top unit, by initiating an out-of-the-box thinking environment that resulted in over 30 technical innovations in just 1 year. I followed up this innovation culture by leading a cross-departmental platform where engineers from across the company could contribute and share a think tank of ideas that solved several long-running problems of many a unit. I learnt that inspiring others to achieve their dreams is a wonderful achievement in itself. I also learnt that taking initiative to lead a change process is well worth the risk of failure. The team of engineers that I led published ten articles on the prestigious Intel Disclosure Forum in one year - a record by far. From 2004 to 2007, I worked as a business consultant at Accenture, in charge of setting up the billion-dollar industry giant's operations in China. It was a daunting task to apply the best practices of the company in the traditional Chinese environment. I found my way around the problem in two ways. Customizing these practices to best suit the local needs, and innovating new ideas that helped the client learn and adopt them. I learned to interact with the top management and the employees of several Chinese companies to make them familiar of the changing business realities and inspiring them to embrace new ideas. This consulting experience gave me tremendous insight into different businesses, managerial philosophies, operational styles and global perspectives. I also got to learn how to communicate with top executives and persuade them to see my point of view. My Candidacy Since I worked as tennis coach I have always dreamed of building a tennis school of my own. Since I applied last time at Wharton my life has been very eventful. I have gone ahead and implemented my dream to some extent. I have been making plans and accumulating a small fortune on my own for my school all this time and things finally fell into place early this year. A high school was on sale in the neighborhood and I decided to buy this school and transform it into to a sports school. This sudden turn of events has caught me unawares on several skills of entrepreneurship that I had no idea about. First, I learnt how to write a business plan and persuade others to invest in it. I raised money from eleven colleagues in Intel and Accenture and four alumni. They became my founding shareholders. Secondly, I learnt the psychological side of managing people. It took a lot of efforts to make the former management team of the school to understand my ideas and to keep them from quitting. Third, I learnt about marketing & sales, a function that I had never touched before. This entrepreneurship experience has given me tremendous confidence in myself and hands-on experience in setting-up and running a business from the scratch. I feel, I am better equipped to understand the latest theories and practices of the business world than last year. I am also more focused in my approach to studies, with a well etched out career plan. Career Goals Based on the current business, I set my short-term career goal to build a brand name for this sports education venture by associating it with famous athletes, pioneering education philosophies, and sponsoring local sports events. I want to

Student Assessment Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Student Assessment - Assignment Example They also fail to measure the need for student growth which is needed to plan future instruction or lecture strategies (Tsagari). This has called for re-examining the traditional or conventional approach to testing qualities, hence a movement of alternative testing (Rachmnn 2005). Wiggins (1998) and Darling-Hammond, Ancess and Falk (1995) also pointed out the problem of deep understanding with conventional testing, emphasizing that deep understanding is robust learning which can be applied to different situations. The criticism pointed out by Wiggins and Darling-Hammond is that conventional forms of testing such as exercises, quizzes and multiple choice questions are not capable of gauging this understanding among students (Williams 2007). Due to these criticisms Wiggins and Darling-Hammond, Ancess and Falk are in favor of performance assessment, in which instead of testing a student using multiple choice questions, they are to work on projects, conduct interviews, and presentations in order to demonstrate their understanding to the reviewers/teachers (Ross 2006) . The basic premise of the vision of authentic achievement as proposed by Newmann, Secada, and Wehlage (1995) outlines the creation of more interesting yet challenging assessment tools for students. Teachers can encourage students to produce more intellectual work in the form of real world applications, and hence increase their performance. Although the basic assumption behind traditional and authentic assessment is common, which is to develop prolific citizens, the former approach tests the students on the possession of certain knowledge while the latter tests the students on the application of knowledge (Mueller 2008). Another difference between the two approaches is that in the traditional approach knowledge is the curriculum determined prior to delivery while in the latter the task to be executed by the students is determined first, which would include the application of knowledge and the curriculum to enable the students to perform the task is determined later (Mueller 2008). Dictionary definition of rubric is "an authoritative rule, especially, a rule for conduct of a liturgical service" (Dictionary 2008). Rubrics basically are assessment tools with the help of which the teacher can predefine what basis the paper or work will be judged on and how scoring will be done on the basis of the predefined criteria (ALTEC 2008). Hence, I agree with the statement that "using rubrics to code student work makes the expectations for success clear, and thereby solves a major problem of traditional assessment, namely, the mystery of marking/evaluating student performance" (Course Resource). If a student does not get a good grade despite knowing the rubrics, the teacher is to a point faultless because the student was informed about the assessment criteria and both students and teacher share with each other the requirements for a particular project (Holbrook 2001). Assessments by rubrics are very detailed and give students a much more clear idea of what they are expected (Walvoord n.d.).It is also very helpful as an assessment tool as it is an ongoing review process where students can also self assess themselves on the basis of preset criteria before submitting their work (Andrade 2001).