Success, Then and Now: Assess Your ACES Progress
At the beginning of the term, you completed ACES, and in each chapter of this book you’ve had a chance to reflect on your scores and use them to target areas where you want to develop your skills. Now that you’ve reached the end of the term, it’s time to reflect on the ACES scales once more, but in a slightly different way. This time, we’re not the ones providing results — you are! You’ll assess how much you’ve progressed on the various skills during the term and use your assessment to celebrate improvement and identify areas for future growth. To do this, use Figure 14.1 as your guide and follow these steps.
Gather your ACES scores. You can access ACES here.
On each scale in Figure 14.1, place an X where your corresponding ACES score falls. For example, if your Critical Thinking and Goal Setting score is 62 percent, mark the scale as follows.
For each skill, ask yourself: Do I think my ability on this skill has improved since I took ACES at the start of the term? If so, what score would I give myself now? Do I think my ability is lower now than I thought it was at the start of the term? If so, what score would I give myself today?
Drawing on your honest responses to the questions in step 3, record a new score on each scale if you believe your abilities have changed. Place another X where the new score belongs.
For each skill, draw an arrow from your original score to your new score. For example, if you think that you’ve improved significantly in critical thinking and goal setting, you might mark the scale as follows.
Resist any urge to rush through this activity. To really understand how your skills have changed, you need to trace what’s happened over the term. For example, let’s say that your initial score on the Reading scale was low. You weren’t a confident reader when the term began, and you didn’t enjoy reading. As time passed, though, you realized that you needed to read well in order to succeed in school, so you focused on improving. You previewed your reading materials before looking more closely at the content, and you mastered the art of crafting purposeful reading questions. Now you can feel good about giving yourself a higher score.
338
As another example, let’s say that your original Organization and Time Management score was very high. At the beginning of the term, you were convinced that you were a time-management pro, but as the term progressed, you began to miss appointments and fall behind in your projects. As it turned out, managing your time was more challenging than you anticipated. Now that you’ve reached the end of the term, you realize that it’s appropriate to give yourself a lower score for organization and time management than the score you had at the start of the term.
WRITING PROMPT: Ask students to write about how they felt when they saw their scores change. Have them answer questions such as these: How does it feel to see how much you have improved? How can you use a lower score to your benefit? What was it like having to make an honest appraisal of your work this term?
If you’re uncomfortable at the thought of giving yourself a lower score, put your mind at ease: There are many logical reasons why your score might be lower now than it was at the beginning of the term. For example, you might have a more realistic understanding of yourself now than you did a few months ago. You’ve learned a lot about the attitudes and skills measured by ACES, so it’s only natural that you’re a better judge of your strengths and growth areas. Alternatively, maybe you misjudged the demands of college. You might have been a rock star at time management and organization in high school or at work, but now you need to step up your game in the more demanding college environment. So don’t be afraid to lower your score if need be. Doing so shows that you’re self-aware and allows you to more accurately gauge the progress you’ve made — or the skills you still need to strengthen.
After you complete Figure 14.1, you’ll have a snapshot of the overall change in your skills from the start of the term to the end. To extract valuable insights from that snapshot, use these tips.
Identify any patterns in your results. For example, are the scales on which you made the most progress related to one another? What about the ones on which you made the least progress? And in the areas where you made the most progress, did you set and achieve SMART goals? Students often see the most improvement in areas where they establish goals to improve a skill, carry out their action plans, and achieve their desired results.
Celebrate the major improvements you’ve made. You’ve worked hard, and you deserve to reward yourself. As you take more difficult courses and make tougher academic and career decisions in upcoming terms, you can stay motivated by keeping your greatest successes in mind. And you can use the skills you’ve built to tackle each new challenge and make smart decisions.
Adopt a continual-learning mind-set. For skills in which you’ve made less progress than you’d hoped, remind yourself that it’s hard to develop many different skills at the same time. As you progress through college and have more work experiences, you can keep striving to build certain skills. By taking this course, you’ve armed yourself with the tools you need to learn and improve in whatever areas you target. If you use these tools during the rest of your college journey, you’ll continue to “move the needle” in a positive direction.
FOR DISCUSSION: Ask students to briefly identify what they consider their greatest successes. Go around the room and encourage each student to share.
WRITING PROMPT: Have students identify a time when they developed several different skills at the same time. Maybe they learned to skateboard and had to master balance, tricks, and speed. Ask them to write a one-page summary of their experience, including how they felt (frustrated? energized?) and the strategies they used to master these skills.
339
340