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 Curriculum Handbook 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 Workbook | Included in Toolkit |
| Student Leadership Competencies Inventory | Free |
| SLC iOS App | Free |
| Curriculum Index | Included in Toolkit |
Please refer to the Terms and Conditions page before purchasing any resources.
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.
In addition, the Student Leadership Competencies Curriculum Handbook includes an index that provides a list of all 60 Student Leadership Competencies by dimension with nearly 1000 associated activities and modules from five popular leadership curriculum sources:
- 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 Curriculum Handbook.
- Student Leadership Competencies Inventory
- Student Leadership Competencies Self-Ranking Evaluation
- Student Leadership Competencies App: Ranking
- Student Leadership Competencies Self-Ranking Career Competencies Evaluation
- Student Leadership Competencies 360 Evaluation
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 Curriculum Handbook, you can get access to lesson plans for activities designed to help your students interpret, reflect on, and apply their leadership competencies.
Student Leadership Competencies Resources
In addition to the tools available, there are two main resources for students, the Student Leadership Competencies Workbook and the SLC iOS app. Find out more about using these two resources in the Student Leadership Competencies Curriculum Handbook.
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 Curriculum Handbook, you will find suggestions on weekly exercises to infuse competency development into your student meeting agendas.