The following pages outline the assignments, discussion forums and peer reviews that were required of students in 15.662x who wanted to obtain a verified certificate for the course, as well as the results of the poll questions.
Assignments and Polls
Week 1: What is Your Dream for Your Future of Work?
Very few people are represented by labor unions nowadays. This video briefly discussed local innovations (beyond traditional labor unions) aimed at improving the working circumstances of everyday people.
Indeed, many powerful ideas to improve employment often come from everyday people who see a need and uncover a way to address it. For example, Glassdoor encourages transparency by letting employees rate their employers. An up-and-coming website called Beansprock tries to help people identify jobs they will like. Other sites, like OpenIdeo, try to crowd-source solutions to a broad range of social issues, including incentivizing corporate social responsibility.
So, having seen this material, what are your dreams for your job and your career? I grew up on a small dairy farm milking cows and baling hay with my father and siblings. Early on he said to all of us: Work hard, get as much and the best education as you can and you will have a better life than we can provide. That’s the traditional view of the “American Dream”—that every generation should be able to improve on the standard of living of their parents.
But is that your “Dream"? Does it still work for your generation? Do you want something else from your work, job, career, and personal/family life? This assignment gives you a way of answering that question for yourself. Then answer the following questions in brief.
- How similar or different are your aspirations, expectations for your future jobs, career, and family life compared to your parents? Compared to your grandparents?
- Why do you think they are different or similar?
- Summarize the information you’ve collected by providing a one paragraph statement of your personal “Dream” (American or otherwise depending on where you live!)
Students’ responses to the question: What is your primary aspiration for work?
Week 1 Poll Data
Students’ responses to the question: Are you currently represented by a labor union?
- 12.4% Yes
- 65.3% No
- 2.6% I’m not sure
- 19.7% I’m not currently employed
Students’ responses to the question: What is your primary aspiration for work? Following are some of the potential aspirations for work. Though many may be appealing to you, please select the option that is “most” important to you.
- 13.9% To have autonomy
- 11% To be an entrepreneur
- 13.5% To make a very good income
- 24.1% To solve big and important problems
- 24.9% To find work/life balance
- 12.7% To help others
Discussion Forum: High Road Employment Practices
In the student discussion forum, we encouraged dialogue about how to promote “high road” employment practices (such as those demonstrated by Southwest Airlines), training, and higher levels of economic security. Why do some organizations continue to use low road employment practices? What are the best ways to promote change?
Students were asked to post ideas, but also follow-up on others’ comments to participate in constructive dialogue with classmates.
Week 2: Career Planning First Step
This week we begin our career planning exercise. This exercise will be done in steps as we progress through the course. At the end you will have a document you can use as your Personal Career Development Plan. We will do the first phase of the plan as this week’s assignment.
The first step in any career plan is to figure out what type of work interests you and what education and skills you will need to find a good job / career in that field of work. There are lots of different instruments available (most for a price) to do this. You can use any of your choosing but we recommend using the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*Net Short Interest Profiler because it is free of charge, easily accessible, and provides useful information on the levels of education associated with different occupations within a given field of work.
Once you complete the questions, the Profiler arrays the strength of your interests across six dimensions: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. It will then list a range of occupations that match your profile, allow you to choose the level of the occupation/career you would like to achieve, and identify the education you will need to obtain a position at that level.
Students’ responses to the question: Do you feel it’s important that wages and productivity rises together?
For this assignment, there are four steps:
- Complete the U.S. Department of Labor O*Net Interest Profiler and identify a job that you might like to pursue.
- After identifying a job you might like to pursue, find people who work in that or a similar job: You can ask family or friends. You can also search the internet for professional communities online and post questions (for example, enter the job name + “forum” or “online community” into your search browser and create an account, if necessary).
- Ask these individuals for their opinions: What do they like and dislike about their job? How are they treated by their organization? Do they have recommendations for someone who is considering this line of work?
- Write up your experiences and submit them for peer review. Be sure to describe the job you considered, where you turned for information, and the feedback that you received.
- Week 3: Good Job Survey
Visit an organization and rate it based on the “good jobs” app provided on the survey website: 2016 Good Jobs Survey (PDF). This can be the organization you work for or have worked for in the past or an organization where you shop as a customer, or some other organization you know well. Report the data on the course website with a comment on what it would take to make it a truly “Great Company and Great Place to Work!”
- Which company did you choose and what is your relationship with the company (e.g., employee, customer)?
- In your opinion, what practices make this employer a “high road” or “low road” employer?
- If you were writing a letter to management, what tangible recommendations for improvement would you give?
Week 2 Poll Data: Post-war Social Contract
Students’ responses to the following question: Do you feel it’s important that wages and productivity rises together?
- 85.9% Yes, it’s important that wages and productivity rises together
- 5.8% No, it’s not important that wages and productivity rises together
- 8.3% I am not sure
Discussion Forum: Wages and Productivity
In the discussion forum, students were asked to elaborate on their ideas: If they feel that it’s important for wages and productivity to rise in tandem, and discuss why they feel this way. If they feel this divergence is not important, explain this point of view.
Week 3: Innovations in the 1980s and Beyond
Week 3 Poll Data
Students’ responses to the question: How responsible do you feel that corporations should be toward the following groups?
Stockholders:
- 2.6% Not at all responsible
- 43.8% Partly responsible
- 53.6% Very responsible
Society at large:
- 1.3% Not at all responsible
- 35.6% Partly responsible
- 63.1% Very responsible
Its employees:
- 1.3% Not at all responsible
- 13.9% Partly responsible
- 84.8% Very responsible
Discussion Forum: The Purpose of the Corporation
For those of you that believe that corporations should be accountable to a broader range of stakeholders (beyond their immediate shareholders), why do you think this?
What is the role of government in ensuring corporate social responsibility? How and when (if at all) should government intervene to promote corporate social responsibility?
Week 4: Complete Your Career Plan
Use the results of the O*Net Interest Profiler you completed in Week 2 and build out your Career Plan as follows.
Use the results of the data provided by the O*Net Profiler exercise to think hard about your work and career interests. Ask yourself, based on what we have discussed in this course, are there new skills or competencies you will need to be successful in the career of your choice? You may have life and work experiences that motivate you to pursue a career different than what the Profiler suggests and that is fine, as long as you have thought out and discussed your career interests with people you trust—family members, peers, counselors, union or professional association experts, mentors, etc.
Based on the data from the Profiler and/or your self-reflection, provide short answers to each of the following questions either in the Version for those Currently Employed or the Version for those Currently in School.
Version for Those Currently Employed
- What is your target occupation of choice for your next job (either with your current employer or another organization)?
- What additional education do you need to obtain to qualify and be successful in that job/career and how and when do you plan to obtain it?
- What will you do while getting the education needed to build contacts, networks, or other pathways to your target job?
- Now that you are in the labor force:
- Who are your mentors?
- What key external professional/occupational/personal networks are you building or engaged in that will help you be successful in getting your next job of choice?
- What are you doing to keep your skills up to date with changing technologies or other things affecting your preferred job and career?
- What do you want to be doing in ten years?
- What else, in addition to the actions listed above, do you need to do to achieve your ten year goal(s)?
- How does your job/career fit with your personal/family life? Who else do you need to consider and consult in making job/career decisions?
- What will you do to find a future employer(s) and work environment that meet your expectations? (remember the elements in the “good jobs” app we used earlier in this course)
- What are you doing to improve the employment conditions and opportunities that allow you and your fellow employees to achieve their career goals?
Version for Those Currently in School
- What is your target occupation of choice once you are ready to enter the labor force?
- What education do you need to obtain and be successful in that job/career and how and when do you plan to obtain it?
- What will you do while getting the education needed to build contacts, networks, or other pathways to your target job?
- Once hired:
- Who will you seek out as your mentor(s)?
- What key external professional/occupational/personal networks will you need to build or join and maintain to be successful in this job?
- What will you do to keep your skills up to date with changing technologies or other ways this job might/will change in the future?
- What do you want to be doing in ten years?
- What else, in addition to the actions listed above, do you need to do to achieve your ten year goal(s)?
- How will your job/career fit with your personal/family life? Who else do you need to consider and consult in making job/career decisions?
- What will you do to find an employer(s) and work environment that meets your expectations? (remember the elements in the “good jobs” app we used earlier in this course)
- Once employed what will you do to improve the employment conditions and opportunities that allow you and your fellow employees to achieve their career goals?
Week 6: Negotiations Exercise
In Week 6 of this course, you will do an exercise that we call the Social Contract Negotiations Exercise. With your peers, you will negotiate over the future of work. The goal of this exercise is to identify actions and employment practices that could be building blocks for what might be called a “New Social Contract at Work”. The whole exercise will take 1-2 hours.
By the Social Contract we mean: the expectations and obligations that workers, employers, and their communities and societies have for work and employment relationships. Many believe that today, the social contract at work has broken down:
- There are not enough good jobs to meet the needs of the workforce
- Wages are stagnant and have been for many years
- Job satisfaction is declining
- Unions, employers, and government are in gridlock over how to fix this problem.
Your task is to see if you can agree on employment arrangements that give the next generation workforce, employers, and other members of society the best chance of realizing their goals and meeting their responsibilities to their constituencies, to each other, and to society. It is a simulated negotiation among four major stakeholder (roles) in society:
- Management
- Labor Unions / Professional Associations
- Federal Government
- Education Institutions (K-12 and post secondary)
You will be in one of the four roles above and will negotiate with three other people in each of the other roles.
This exercise consists of the following three steps:
Step 1: Preparation Survey
The aim of the Preparation Survey is to prepare you for the role that you will be playing in the exercise. In the survey, you will answer a couple of questions which will help you rank your priorities for the role that you will be playing. Prior to the Preparation Survey, we will assign you to a role and you will fill in the survey from the perspective of that role.
Step 2: Negotiations
In this stage, you will meet three other people in each of the other roles online, and negotiate with them on work and employment practices. We will assign you a group number and you will join that group on the EdX platform. You will be communicating and negotiating with your fellow group members by writing back and forth on your group’s online page.
Step 3: Settlement Survey
After you agree with your fellow group members on specific issues, you need to record the terms of the issues on which you reached an agreement into the Settlement Survey.
For more detailed information about the exercise, please watch our short introductory video.
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