Curriculum

Curriculum, Content, and Activities to Develop Leadership Capacity

In designing competency-based curriculum, it is important to select a process that works for what you are trying to achieve as well as what your existing resources are.

In integrating competencies into the curriculum, it is essential to consider whether you want to infuse them into the content or the pedagogy or both. Associating competencies with content is the more obvious approach, like an ethics workshop focusing on the content of ethics. But, consider that pedagogy is a great way to help students develop competencies. For example, will you be teaching about advocating for a point of view or having students engage in an activity that requires them to advocate for a point of view? The Student Leadership Competencies® Implementation Handbook found in the Toolkit includes ideas for developing competencies through the use of a variety of pedagogies.

The following are resources and ideas to help you in designing and delivering competency-based curriculum.

Resources for Curriculum

Student Leadership Competencies Guidebook$40
Implementation Handbook (digital eBook)Included in Toolkit
Self-Guided WorkbookIncluded in Toolkit
Student Leadership Competencies InventoryFree
SLC iOS AppFree
Curriculum IndexIncluded in Toolkit

Click here to get the Student Leadership Competencies Toolkit

Please refer to the Terms and Conditions page before purchasing access to the Toolkit.

Enhancing Existing Curriculum

In some cases, you may have existing curriculum that you want to review to see what leadership competencies are already embedded. This could be that great workshop or activity that you just know works for your students. In other cases, you may have curriculum that you have a foundation for but know you want to enhance using leadership competencies.

Designing New Curriculum

There is a great deal of leadership curriculum already available. You may have some tried and true activities that you want to use or have access to books and websites with a variety of leadership content. So, there is no need to design curriculum from scratch unless you have a need or desire to. With that said, if you plan to use existing leadership curriculum to focus on competency development, make sure you look at the learning outcomes as well as the lesson plan to see what competencies and dimensions are included.

If you need a bit of a head start on ideas for curriculum, a resource to use is The Student Leadership Competencies Guidebook (Seemiller, 2013). There are examples of curricular ideas for each competency and dimension that could help guide you in designing curriculum specific to your context. This book is not included in the Toolkit but may be purchased on Amazon.

The Curriculum Index, available in the Toolkit, is a list of all 60 Student Leadership Competencies® by domain with a listing of associated activities and modules from six popular leadership facilitation guides. The activities, lesson plans, and resources for these activities are NOT included in the Toolkit. Instead, this is an index that associates every activity in the following leadership facilitation guides to each of the 60 competencies. To access these activities, you must purchase the leadership facilitation guides separately, which are available on Amazon. If you are interested in facilitating an activity around a specific competency, simply look in the index, find the activity, and refer to your purchased copy of the leadership facilitation guide listed.

  • Leadership theory: A facilitator’s guide for cultivating critical perspectives. (Dugan, Turman, & Barnes, 2017).
  • Exploring leadership: For college students who want to make a difference (3rd). (Komives, Lucas, & McMahon, 2013)
  • Leadership for a better world (2nd). (Komives & Wagner, 2009)
  • The student leadership challenge: Five practices for becoming an exemplary leader (2nd ). (Kouzes & Posner, 2014)
  • Emotionally intelligent leadership: A guide for college students (2nd). Shankman, Allen, & Haber-Curran, 2015)
  • Building leaders one hour at a time. (Matthews, 2013)

Student Leadership Competencies® Tools

In addition to facilitating curriculum that focuses on the development of particular competencies, you can also engage in activities that help students understand their overall competencies. The following are several tools you can incorporate into workshops, courses, supervision, advising, and other leadership development experiences as a self-reflection or goal-setting tool. More about each of these tools is discussed in the Student Leadership Competencies® Implementation Handbook.

Student Leadership Competencies® Curriculum

In addition to competency-specific curriculum, such as an activity on ethics for example, activities related to competencies overall can help students make meaning of what competencies are and why they are important. In the Student Leadership Competencies® Implementation Handbook, available in the Toolkit, you can get access to lesson plans for activities designed to help your students interpret, reflect on, and apply their leadership competencies in general.

Student Leadership Competencies® Resources

In addition to the tools available, there are two main resources for students, the Student Leadership Competencies® Self-Guided Workbook, included in the Toolkit, and the SLC iOS app, available on the App Store. Find out more about using these two resources in the Student Leadership Competencies® Implementation Handbook in the Toolkit. The Toolkit includes a single use of a Self-Guided Workbook. To order additional copies for students for $5 each, please contact us.

Using Competencies with Advising/Supervision

Competency development does not just have to take place in a formal training environment. The one-on-one time we have with students can be perfect for helping them work on developing competencies. In the Student Leadership Competencies® Implementation Handbook, you will find suggestions on weekly exercises to infuse competency development into your student meeting agendas.