Module 3: Goals

Activity: Brainstorming Personal and Professional Goals


Background

Most internship descriptions will define an intern's proposed responsibilities and project areas. These differ from an intern's individual development goals. While responsibilities are assigned, individual development goals are areas that an intern deliberately chooses to focus on for personal and professional benefit.

H. Frederick Sweitzer and Mary A. King of The Successful Internship: Personal, Professional, and Civic Development in Experiential Learning (Fourth Edition) suggest spreading goals across domains and dimensions:

 

Domains

  • Personal Development: where your goals can reflect what you want to improve or change that affects different aspects of your life.
  • Professional Development: where your goals reflect what you want to learn or develop in a profession or discipline. 

 

 

 

 

 

Dimensions
  • Knowledge: Factual knowledge that you wish to attain as it relates to information, terminology, concepts, ideas, and similar areas.
  • Skills: Skills that you wish to learn or develop.
  • Attitudes/Values: Attitudes and values that you wish to improve in yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 


Sample Goals

Here is an example set of goals from an instructional design intern that uses the domains and dimensions from above. Notice that it includes a range of goal types, from broad to specific. These goals are intended to be revisited throughout the internship experience and can be amended or changed if responsibilities or interests shift.

 

Personal

Professional

Knowledge

  • Learn how to negotiate job offers
  • Understand constructivist learning theory and how it applies to course assessments

Skills 

  • Get experience leading a meeting
  • Work collaboratively since I work independently in my academic discipline
  • Learn the basic functions of one e-authoring software
  • Learn about how to ensure accessibility for screen readers on PDF documents

Attitudes/Values

  • Set boundaries with myself about working outside of my scheduled work hours
  • Become more confident asking for opportunities that interest me
  • Hone accessibility and equitability in instructional design work in a meaningful way