CSD 8235 Counseling Applications
in Communication Disorders

Descriptions Of Assignments

Midterm Exam (50 points)

The midterm exam will take the form of a take-home essay exam. It will contain about 6-8 questions from which you may choose 2-3 to answer. Your responses should be thorough, and require approximately 2-3 typed, double-spaced pages. Use proper APA style throughout the paper and in the references.  You will need to look beyond the text book for information to include in your responses.  Provide references. Watch this space for the questions.

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Case Study Paper (100 points)

A common avenue for professional growth and development involves the ability to learn from past experiences. Professionals often stand at a new place in their professional growth, look back on a previous difficult experience, and try to apply new knowledge and insight to that old experience. Engaging in this sort of reflective activity brings the beginnings of professional wisdom.

This project will give you a chance to look back on a previous clinical experience, bring new knowledge and insight to it, and develop your professional wisdom. Think of it as an "if I knew then what I know now" kind of endeavor. For this project you need to choose a client, family, or clinical situation that you experienced or that you observed another clinician involved in, and reflect on how things might have happened differently if you knew then what you know now about counseling issues.

The steps that you need to go through will correspond to the pieces of your final product. They include:

• Describe the particulars of the case; who are the people; what is each person's role; what is the scene; what is the presenting diagnosis if known.

• Describe the issues from a counseling perspective - cultural beliefs, existential issues, grieving states, etc. This will require intellectual thought and application of theoretical information.

• Based on the issues present, what do you think the client or family needs?

• What knowledge, skills, attitudes, etc. could you apply to that situation and how would you apply them? This also requires intellectual thought and application of theoretical information.

• How might you, the client, the family, or the outcome, change as a result of the applications that you made in the previous step?

The final product will take the form of a paper, complete with references. Papers will probably run a minimum of 5-6 pages. You'll need a minimum of three (3) printed reference for this paper.  Use proper APA style throughout the paper.

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Reflection Papers (3 @ 15 points each)

Counseling information lends itself to reflection better than to analysis. Reflection gives us a chance to step back from a situation, encounter, or event and ponder our personal experience with that event. "Personal" in this case, means inward, and includes thoughts, feelings, memories, insights, perceptions, etc.  Reflection invites us to move beyond the cognitive and intellectual realms, into the realms of insight, intuition, awareness, and wisdom.  Reflection leads us to some deeper level of understanding; deeper understanding allows us to find meaning in the situation/event.  A useful question to ask oneself in reflection is:  how has this experience changed me?

You will need to write three (3) reflection papers during this course. Use the stories in Kitchen Table Wisdom, the stories of our guest speakers, or your own clinical experiences to spark your reflections. The door is wide open for how to approach these papers. That said, reflection has the most value when we keep the topic of focus narrow. For each paper, choose one issue that the experience evoked in your mind. You may see parallels between one of Remen's stories and something a speaker says. You may see a theme running through several of Remen's stories. You may have had a personal or clinical experience very similar to one described by a speaker, a classmate, or an author.

Begin your paper with a clear description of what you are reflecting on; e.g. title of the story, statement of a speaker, situation described by a speaker. Then provide a clear statement of the issue, theme, or notion that you plan to address in your paper. Then, go nuts.

These papers do not need to be long and involved. They will probably run about 2 typed, double spaced pages. Pay attention to organization, clarity, writing style, and writing mechanics. Include references when appropriate.

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Class Participation: Listening Practice (35 points)

Listening lies at the heart of good counseling practices. Whatever we say to a client, what questions we ask, what responses we provide, stem from the type and quality of the listening in which we engage at that given point in the session. Listening comes from the soul. Good listening is hard work and it takes practice. Most people don't do it very well in the course of their everyday exchanges.

For effective counseling, we need to demonstrate our depth and level of listening to our clients. We can do this in a variety of ways with a variety of behaviors. You will have a chance to learn and practice 8 such listening behaviors in class at the rate of about one per class session. After you've had practice with each of the eight behaviors, you will have a chance to put them together into a balanced mix.

Here are the listening behaviors and the order in which we will practice them. The links will take you to definitions and descriptions of each one, plus some questions to ask for debriefing yourself after the experience. 

After each practice session we will have a debriefing to discuss how you did with each behavior. Some behaviors will be easy for you to do and some will be difficult. The debriefings will help you realize which behaviors you already do well and which behaviors you need to devote some attention to in order to enhance your clinical effectiveness. The practice sessions and debriefings will contribute to your class participation grade for the course.

So that you don't get stuck in a rut of talking about the same thing every day, here is a list of general topics from which you can draw. Later I will provide a list of clinical situations that you can role play. Feel free to role play other situations or address other topics. The topic doesn't matter. What matters is that you and your partner talk about something that will take you below the surface of facts and events so that you can practice listening to understand.

Topics: Plan B; expectations for 2nd year of graduate school; anxieties for 2nd year of graduate school; what your first year in college was like; what your first year in graduate school was like; your experiences with your first client; a challenging client or clinical situation; your relationship to your family; a quirky family relative; some kind of loss that you've experienced; some kind of success or triumph in your life; a past or future transition in your life; an experience or encounter that left you puzzled, hurt, angry, or frustrated; your immediate and long range outlooks for your life; a current concern that you feel safe to share with a classmate.

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The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
©2008 Cindy S. Spillers. For concerns about this course contact the instructor at cspiller@d.umn.edu

posted September 2008