Rae Odiorne 

Communication Competence

Learners will become effective communicators in their discipline. With this skill I will be able to communicate clearly with everyone and have the ability to express my ideas in a concise and intelligent manner"

             My first artifact, Emotional Dysregulation Disorder, which is my Communication Competence artifact, is an end-of-term paper written for Developmental Psychology, or PSY 241. This was a 16 week, seated course, and the paper was written over the span of 2 weeks with one week for research prior. My teacher, Mrs. Parham, instructed the students to dive deep into a certain psychological disorder for the purpose of educating ourselves and also the other students. Subsequent to submitting the paper, Mrs. Parham had each class member give a brief discussion in class of the psychological disorder we chose. This paper is by far the one I am most proud of from my time at South Piedmont Community College because it is not only a subject I am now passionate and educated about, but it also portrays my fulfilment of my Communication Competence goals. These goals were the standards I set for myself in my first semester of college, goals I wanted myself to meet so as to excel in writing later in life.

             The artifact for Communication Competence is a Developmental Psychology paper entitled Emotional Dysregulation Disorder. The paper discusses the developmental disorder called Emotional Dysregulation. This disorder causes people to respond to situations in an inappropriate manner or in a way which the situation did not call for. These outbursts can make for an uncomfortable situation, but they are unavoidable. Emotional Dysregulation Disorder is caused by a number of other disorders including ADHD, PTSD, Autism, BPD, and Bipolar Disorder. My artifact contains 9 pages of content and discusses each disorder under the Emotional Dysregulation Disorder umbrella in detail. The purpose of this assignment was for each student to study and gain an understanding of a disorder and be able to share our findings with the class. In addition to fulfilling this purpose, I also learned how to react when someone with this disability is having a difficult time with their surroundings so I will not only be informed but will know what each disorder requires.

             This paper reflects the fulfilment of my goals for Communication Competence. These are goals which I set for myself at the beginning of my college career as things I wanted to improve on or new skills I wanted to develop. The first goal is, “To masterfully execute a paper in proper APA format including cover page and citations before graduation.” This artifact was written entirely in APA format, complete with a cover page, abstract, correct in-text citations and reference page. Each formatting detail is correctly done in the proper APA formatting, and therefore the goal has been met. The second goal is, “ To write with my audience in mind- including age, gender, social status, education and more.” This goal was one I set for myself after taking English 111 and learned the importance of knowing who you are writing for. In this case, while I was in part writing for my Psychology professor, the instructions were to write a research paper to inform the general public about a psychological disorder. As is reflected in my paper, I was writing to people with little to no knowledge of this disorder. When writing to the general public, this typically means writing to a broad group of people with varying ages, genders and educational statuses. I had to keep this in mind as I wrote, making sure to explain every term and be as open and inclusive with my language as was possible. Being able to write for a particular audience is key to making your papers well-read and received.

             What I learned when writing this paper is important not only in terms of meeting the course requirements, but these skills will also assist me in every paper I write from here on. Learning these key skills such as writing in APA format and being able to write for a specific audience is beneficial not only for a career in general, but also for Physical Therapy in particular. My career goal is to become a Physical Therapy Assistant, which is in the broader medical field. Medical papers are almost always written in APA format, so any formal papers I may construct in my career will utilize the skills I learned and displayed in this artifact. Secondly, being able to take what I learned and write it in a way that the general public will understand is also important for my job. Much of what I will do as a PTA is taking the instructions and notes from the Physical Therapist and using those to help the patient. This means I must take the technical terms and medical language and be able to explain them in a way the patient will understand and feel comfortable with.

             In addition to meeting the goals I set my first semester of college, I also learned the importance of knowing why people act in certain ways and being empathetic towards them. Researching Emotional Dysregulation helped me to develop a deeper understanding of people and also a deeper respect and admiration for those who deal with these disorders. And so this artifact not only displays my academic skills and the goals I accomplished, but it also serves as an example of how much I have grown in my knowledge of people during my time at South Piedmont. Having empathy and understanding for all types of people will be helpful in my career as a PTA, and I am thankful for the assignment and for the opportunity to reflect on what it taught me.

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Cultural Competence

"Learners will recognize and adapt to various cultures, ideas, and practices within their discipline"

             The artifact I have chosen for Cultural Competence is a paper from my 16 week, online World Civilizations course. This paper is on the language, migration and culture of Germany. This paper is important to me because it was written when my family hosted an exchange student from Germany. She helped me to understand the German culture in a personal way, and so when I was given this assignment to pick a culture I immediately wanted to write about Germany. It only took a few days to complete the assignment but it gave me a deep appreciation for and understanding of Germany and its language and culture.

            My first goal for Cultural Competence was “To speak with someone from a different culture and use that information for a project”. This goal was easily fulfilled because of the wonderful exchange student who lived with us for a year. I was able to hear her personal experience of living in Germany, understanding the differences between that country and America and develop an appreciation and interest in the subject. I have always believed that you understand a culture best by being immersed in it or learning from someone who has. I was able to use the knowledge that our exchange student gave me to compose my paper.

            My second goal was “To learn and research about a specific aspect of another culture.” This was a goal of mine because I wanted to not just learn about the surface of a culture, but to deeply look into a specific part of another culture. For this assignment, I chose the German language- its origins, how it changed, the vocabulary, and how migration and even the printing press effected the language. The language of a country is so deeply connected to that culture that I knew I wanted to research this aspect of Germany as soon as I was given the assignment. By fulfilling this assignment I not only have a better understanding of Germany and its rich culture, but I also have a deep knowledge of its language and history.

            In the end, assignments like the one my history teacher gave me are an integral part of understanding a country or culture. Being able to not only understand the overall facts about a country but to research specific aspects of that culture is an excellent way to instill an appreciation for other cultures. As students, it is easy to focus on getting good grades and just passing the courses we are taking, but assignments like these help to remind myself of the joy of learning. Having this appreciation for other cultures and languages will be helpful in my career as a PTA because I will be in contact with people for my whole shift and will benefit from knowing about other cultures and peoples backgrounds.

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Creative Problem Solving

"Learners will apply appropriate techniques to solving problems within their discipline"

             The artifact I chose for Creative Problem Solving is a report I completed for my 16 week, seated, Statistical Math course. For this assignment, the students were tasked with proving whether a claim was correct or not using statistical methods. Our instructor gave each student a bag of M&M’s and also a made-up claim by the Mars Candy Company about the percentages of their M&M colors and the weight. We were asked to use the contents of the M&M bag to decide whether or not the claim was true. I had to use hypothesis testing and confidence intervals to find the truth behind the claims. In the end, I discovered that the claims were invalid and had to use the results from my testing to prove the fallacy.

            The first goal I set for myself in Creative Problem Solving was “To solve a problem using a new technique I learned.” I was able to use the software program called StatCrunch to not only test whether or not the claims were valid, but also used the data I collected from StatCrunch to prove that the claims were false. This is an excellent mathematical tool and it was something new I learned from my Statistical math course. I was able to take the techniques I learned and use them to complete the assignment. StatCrunch was used to create a proportion confidence interval, find the confidence level, hypothesis test, P-value, significance value, and null. By finding the P-value to be lower than the significance value, the null is rejected meaning there was sufficient evidence to warrant rejection of the claim made by the Mars Candy Company.

            The second goal I set in Creative Problem Solving was “To collaborate with others to and agree on the most effective way to solve a problem”. Teamwork is vital in my desired career as a Physical Therapy Assistant, and I have to have good people skills. I wanted to set this goal to train myself on how to work with others towards a solution. While this project was not a collaborative one, our instructor gave us time in class to help each other navigate the software program and provide assistance with solving the problems. I learned a lot about StatCrunch from my classmates and was able to write a strong report because of their help. Having the experience of working with others on finding the answer to a question was beneficial to me then in the class and also will be in the future.

            Ultimately, this assignment helped me grow my confidence in math. Having to work extra hard in this course because of my math learning disabilities was certainly difficult but highly rewarding. My helpful teacher and wonderful classmates made the statistical math course a great learning experience. I learned new software programs like StatCrunch and Excel, I learned to work with others on projects, I learned how to study in a way that worked with my disability, and I learned the feeling of accomplishment that came with working hard on a math problem until I understood and solved it. Problem solving was never a particularly strong skill of mine, especially in math, but this course gave me the confidence and the tools I will need to solve problems in the future.

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Information and Media Literacy

"Learners will demonstrate the ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively and responsibly use and share that information for the problem at hand"

             The artifact I chose for Information and Media Literacy is a paper I composed for a 16 week, seated, English course about writing for my discipline. This paper is a research paper on the benefits of Sign Language for people with Autism. I chose this paper because it includes a lot of information on the subject found from reliable sources. This was a topic I had never heard talked about, and so I wanted to take on the challenge of writing a well-supported report on a subject rarely discussed. At the time I wrote this paper I wanted to be a Sign Language Interpreter, and while my career path has changed, I am still learning sign language and still connected to the deaf world through people I met during that time of my life. And even though I have changed to being a PTA, the medical aspect of this paper along with finding a non-medicinal solution will be helpful in my career.

             The general idea of the paper is that Sign Language has been proven to help remedy the communication barrier with people with Autism. A person with Autism is born with weak communication abilities and this can cause immense frustration for both people involved. But by learning and using Sign Language, children are able to communicate with their hands. The visual aspect of Sign Language is helpful because it taps into a part of the brain that opens a world of communication potential for autistic people.

             The first goal I set for myself in Information and Media Literacy was “To be able to write a well-documented and well-researched report”. This paper could not have been written without trustworthy information, and so I was able to fulfill this goal through writing my paper on Sign Language and Autism. This paper includes the writings of Anne Toth, a scholar who conducted a research project using Sign Language with autistic people and who’s research has been studied and used countless times by other scholars. In my paper I also discuss the life of a boy named C.Z. who was autistic and also had hearing loss. He was observed for a few months and it was found that C.Z.’s communication skills improved greatly when he was taught to use Sign Language. I also discuss how pronouns are a great example of the benefits of Sign Language in autistic patients. Because a person points to themselves when referring to themselves and points to another person when referring to them, autistic children learned to understand pronouns correctly. Instead of talking about themselves in the third person as many autistic children learn to do because they cannot comprehend pronouns, Sign Language helped them to communicate correctly in this area. The research I conducted when composing this artifact is an essential part of the paper.

             The second goal I set for myself was “To discover and utilize strong sources without using Encyclopedias”. This was a goal I set for myself after my history teacher expressed the fact that encyclopedia’s of any kind are not examples of strong sources. Using the Encyclopedia Britannica and other such sources was a routine part of my paper writing, but I wanted to challenge myself to write a paper without those kinds of sources. As is evidenced by the reference page of my paper, all of the sources I used were from scholarly journals and databases such as NC Live and ProQuest. I am proud of myself for writing such a strong paper with reliable documentation without using these weaker sources.

             Overall, writing this paper was a challenge because it took extra time and focus to complete, but the end result was well worth the dedication. I consider this paper to be among my strongest that I have written while at South Piedmont CC not only because it was a topic that forced me to dive deep into something I had never learned about, but because I tasked myself with only using scholarly sources from trusted databases. In the end, this paper is well researched and well documented and therefore fulfilled both of my goals.

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Social Scientific Literacy

"Learners will demonstrate an understanding of social science methodologies in order to explain the consequences of human actions"

             This article which I chose for Social Scientific Literacy comes from a 16 week, online, American Government course. The paper is a 16-page, end-of-term paper that took me about 2 weeks to complete. We were tasked with writing about a current event or topic and trace its history in America. I chose the topic of Immigration because it is not only a widely-discussed topic, but also because I wanted to be informed on all angles of the subject. Immigration is a topic which seems to only have 2 sides, but as I researched I began to learn more and more that Immigration is much more complicated than people make it seem. But because Immigration is such a large topic, I chose to research the various Immigration policies throughout American history and discuss the impact they had on America. Because this paper was written right after America saw the highest influx of immigrants in 2017, I had a lot of material to work with in terms of easily accessible information. However, the task of weeding through the strongly opinionated information to find the facts was difficult. But, in the end, I was able to write one of my longest and strongest papers and learned a lot about myself and my political views in the process.

            The first goal I set for Social Scientific Literacy was, “To learn about a social justice issue and present all arguments”. One thing I learned from taking an interest in politics is that it is hard to find information that hasn’t been morphed to fit a certain worldview or ideology. In other words, the top news sites are usually either strongly Conservative or strongly Liberal in nature, and so their reporting of the facts are often slanted towards the sites personal opinion. I knew when I wrote this paper that I wanted to be as neutral as possible and present the facts as best as I could without adding any personal biases. To do this, I added quotes from both Republicans and Democrats who gave their opinion on the matter of Immigration. To refrain from my opinion being the driving force behind the paper, I presented the raw facts and then discussed how people in America viewed those decisions. Additionally, I presented the Immigration policies of both President Obama and President Trump along with the implications both had and how Americans felt about both.

            The second goal I set for myself was, “To study what motivates peoples political decisions and opinions”. Coming from a diverse family in terms of politics, I have always been interested in understanding why people vote for certain things or people. For example, my father is strongly Republican, my mother is Independent, I am Democratic, my sisters are both left-leaning independents, and my grand parents are all different in their political views. This makes for some interesting dinner conversations as I’m sure you can imagine. But, this was the driving force behind my goal. I wanted to use this paper on Immigration to look at why both political parties view Immigration the way they do. What is the motivation behind why many Republicans vote for stricter laws and the removal of certain programs and policies while many Democrats support an easier citizenship process and more programs to help Immigrants both legal and illegal. It is easy for both sides to view the other as uneducated or not caring about the future of the country, but when you take a moment to learn the motives behind their decisions we can stop looking at people as the “other side” and as people who want a better future. I used the same tactic as in my last goal to fulfill this one and that is by adding the comments of both sides and also the actions of a Democratic and a Republican president and why they made the decisions they did. As I stated in my paper, the boiled down difference between President Trump and President Obama was that Trump believes immigrants compromise the prosperity of America and its citizens, and Obama believed immigrants were vital to the bettering of America.

            Ultimately, I learned about a lot more than just politics by writing this paper. I learned the importance of hearing people with different views and not polarizing ourselves. In my career as a PTA I will need to have this sort of understanding nature with my clients and also with the Physical Therapist. We may have different views on how to best help a patient, but in the end we all have to understand that the common goal is the health of the patient. Being able to work together toward a common goal is hard when different opinions are brought in, but just like in politics, we have to remember most people have good intentions even though they are different.

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Understanding the Arts and the Human Experience

"Learners will demonstrate an understanding of arts and humanities in historical and cultural contexts"

The artifact I have chosen for Understanding the Arts and the Human Experience, I have chosen a paper from a 16 week, online music appreciation course. I thought this paper would work well for this program outcome because it discusses using music to make the human experience better. The subject of Music Therapy is important to me because that is the field my older sister is in. I have seen the remarkable changes in people as a result of Music Therapy, and so when I was given the assignment to write a research paper on an aspect of music, I knew immediately that this is what I wanted to write about. Because Music Therapy has been proven to help so many people with all sorts of ailments, I knew I had to narrow down my topic. Alzheimer’s is also an important and personal topic to me because I have known many people who have suffered from this disease. This paper discusses what Alzheimer’s is, it’s symptoms and severity and also how music helps to relieve the pain of those symptoms. While there is currently no cure or even preventative steps one can take, music helps alleviate the burden and pain of Alzheimer’s Disease.

            The first goal I set was, “To make connections between art and how it effects humans.” Music has always been an outlet for me, a way to express myself when I didn’t even know what I was feeling. Growing up in a very musical family I was constantly listening to music from all genres and decades. As I’ve grown older I have come to realize that I bottle up my emotions most of the time, and I have found that music is a way for me to let those emotions out in a healthy way. And so, I know first-hand that the arts influence the human experience. But because I am going into a medical field of sorts, I wanted to research and learn about how the arts have helped alleviate the pain of medical issues. The title of my paper is Music Over Medicine because music has helped Alzheimer’s patients when no medicine has been helpful. As the old saying goes, where words fail, music speaks, but in this case it is when medicine fails, music helps.

            The second goal was, “To study the effect the arts has on human communication”. I have heard many say that humans need art to survive intellectually. Art is therapeutic, it helps people express themselves in a way other things cannot, and it helps humans to communicate with others. This paper discussed Alzheimer’s which has been known to hinder a persons communication skills. As I talked about in the paper, singing and speaking are interconnected, but they use different parts of the brain. Because of this, people with Alzheimer’s are generally able to learn to sing even if they cannot speak. Eventually, a person can take the skills they learned with music such as rhythm and pitch and use those to learn how to speak again. While this was not a big aspect of my paper, I was still able to talk about it and fulfill this goal.

            In conclusion, Music Therapy is an important topic to me and I have personally seen its benefits in the lives of Alzheimer’s patients, including my great grandmother. Music Therapy not only impacts and benefits the human experience, but it also has been proven to help restore communication breakdowns in Alzheimer’s patients. My writing this paper I was able to complete both the goals I set for myself for this program outcome. While I may not use the knowledge I have gained in my career as a Physical Therapy Assistant, I will take with me the deeper understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and the importance of the arts with me for the rest of my life. Having an appreciation of the arts is important for all people, in my opinion, regardless of someone’s career, and I have certainly deepened my appreciation through seeing the miraculous benefits of music in the lives of Alzheimer’s patients.