Core Course Grid

CORE COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVE GRIDS

Core course student learning objective/concept from a core course:	How the concept is related to my problem or question:	How I’ve applied this concept:
Understanding Data   Able to articulate the importance of data in today’s world, and to differentiate valuable data and sponsored data. Learned to identify and evaluate alternative types of data and data sources and explain the effectively present data to provide information and/or support an argument.  Able to apply knowledge of visual and digital rhetoric to craft and interpret messages with intention.	I think for our company website there is a lot of great information, but we need to include relevant data that is both easy for the audience to understand and shows our success with both production and exploration.  Data about digital marketing and how social media is useful to business development will help prove this is a great idea for my company.	After extensive research on both legal documents about advertising in commodities and articles on the importance of digital marketing and social media, I use excel to create pie charts that applied to my presentation and point of the importance of social media in business.  Both using online sales and brand communication.  I also made a bar chart on the utilization rates of the most popular social media platforms.
Contemporary Media Literacies     Illustrate knowledge of visual and digital rhetoric to persuade an audience of a position on a relevant issue.  Able to identify concrete data vs opinion-based literacies in the digital space.	The concept that most applies to this project is deciphering between what is relevant to the website, and what is just filler or unimportant to the cause, which is providing information to prove our companies success in natural gas exploration and production and anything outside of that could be seen as unimportant or it could get lost with too much information.  I also want to focus on certain social media platforms as apposed to all online marketing.	I have found credible sources that are relevant to my project.  One in particular has been extremely helpful with creating visualizations but my research about commodities lead me to learn more about digital marketing and helped shift my project to focus more on being active on social media platforms to grow our online presence and brand development.
Global Awareness and Cultural Competence   Examined multiple dimensions of diversity, culture and identity from a critical perspective.  Able to compare and contrast ethical perspectives and learned strategies for engaging in intercultural interactions.	I think the concept that relates to this project is remembering that not everyone in familiar with the industry of natural gas production and exploration so adequately explaining that will be important, and also that investors can come from all over the world with all different cultures so using simple language to understand and relvant graphs and data will be important in being successful.	By having an online presence, we will reach the most audience we could than without it.  This invites people of all cultures and backgrounds to click on our accounts.  People from all backgrounds: investors or not.  People that invest knows about the importance of natural gas, why it’s better if we still use it, and are unfamiliar with terms, types of drilling, machinery, etc.  It will be important that we explain the importance of these things in a way that people who are unfamiliar with the energy business will be able to understand clearly.

Core course student learning objective/concept from a core course:	How the concept is related to my problem or question:	How I’ve applied this concept:
Self-Awareness   Identify meaningful learning opportunities based on purpose, mission, dreams, and vision. Values: Family, Harmony, Leisure Strengths: Problem-solving, humor, honesty	I’ve been working on and off with our company for many years but haven’t found a spot that really calls to me.  After realizing my strengths in design and sales, marketing brings both of these concepts together.  Natural gas isn’t exactly glamorous but I’m very good at connecting with people and helping explain things in ways people understand.  By using the Self-Awareness course, I knew my strengths and weaknesses and built/reshaped this project to fit me better.	I began this project with wanting to update the website which was a great start but it didn’t involve me and it didn’t help the company in the way I was wanting.  By examining my strengths and weaknesses and asking what I could do for the company now and in the long run, I was able to develop the idea of introducing an online marketing aspect to our company to generate more business development and expand our brand.
System Thinking   Understanding the systems thinking tools and techniques.  Learn to use the tools and techniques to solve problems.  Fluently apply systems thinking tools to real world problems and in personal daily life issues.	Trying to be in a perspective of seeing things as a system has helped me a lot in the business world. By seeing your business or website run as a system, we can better build a successful website and online brand that caters to our specific needs.  Seeing that we are now in an online world and there is no other option than to grow online.	By seeing our company in a systems thinking Interdependence Map, I was able to see we were lacking in online marketing.  All of our departments are running okay but lack of marketing is throwing off our system.  We are too heavily relying on our direct face-to-face sales people and that is not the world we are living in today to be financially successful.
Design Thinking   Understanding the design thinking tools and techniques.  Being able to identify the problem vs symptoms of the problems and who are stakeholders and can help find new solutions to your problem.  Able to find solutions with a group of stakeholders for problems in everyday life.	Design Thinking tools will help me find solutions to my problem while getting feedback from stakeholders like co-workers, executives, and current investors.	By speaking with our CEO, sales team, and CFO, I noticed that updating the website was just not enough.  By asking questions to stakeholders, viewing others business models, I came up with the solution that the website was not enough for change.  We had to adapt our ways of doing business to cater to the new world that is mostly online.