Let's consider your professional development:

You will draft 3-5 professional objectives, things that you would like to learn or ways that you would like to grow professionally. Then, for each objective, list 2-4 activities that will help you achieve your objective.

For non-interns, this is a way to set up a future professional growth plan. Think about ways you would like to grow professionally, over the next five years, and use those objectives for this assignment.

Your objectives on your learning agreement will be different than the ones you complete for this assignment. Those objectives and activities will be written in collaboration with your supervisor, as they will know best your daily activities and responsibilities. For those seeking an internship, creating learning objectives and activities is an important part of both completing your Cooperative Learning Agreement and your internship overall. These objectives help to drive your progress through your internship and they become a way to track your learning and your accomplishments.

Your steps:

1. Write 3-5 professional objective statements.

• An objective is something that you plan, expect, or hope to learn. So draft your objectives to fit that format. What are 3-5 things that you plan, expect, or hope to learn from either your internship or your professional experience?
• Keep each objective simple, clear and straightforward. Think in terms of "I will be able to . . ."
• Given their importance, you need to make sure you select the right objectives and that they are drafted in a way that is specific enough to be meaningful. You will also need to have enough of them to provide a full picture of what you hope to gain from either your internship or your professional development plan.

2. For each of the above objective statements, write 2-4 learning activities that support you achieving that objective.

• What specific actions will you take to make sure you achieve your objectives?
• Again, keep these clear, concise, simple and focused.

An important note on activity statements: So often I will get objective statements pretending to be activity statements. For example: "Learn SQL."First, that is an objective, not an activity. To make activities truly effective, we always need to articulate how we are going to do something, preferably with enough detail that we could confidently start working on each step immediately. Activities must be clearly articulated, measurable, and targeted. Make them as specific as possible. Even a simple rephrase like, "Spend X hours each week studying SQL on Y platform" will transform that objective into an activity.

3. In a Word document, present your objectives and activities as bulleted lists formatted in the following way:

Objective 1:

• Activity 1:
• Activity 2:
• Activity 3:

Remember the objective is what you want to learn and the activities specifywhat you will be doing to make sure you learn the objective.

For Interns: Remember that if you have not found your internship yet, your objectives and activities may be a bit general but be sure to make them more specific as you identify your internship and narrow down the tasks you will be doing. It will be important and beneficial to you do make these more specific and well-matched to your duties.

Need inspiration? The ITAM Internship Resource Center as an extensive list of possible learning objectives and activities to help you overcome writer's block. So much work has been done for you in this valuable resource!