Assignment 2: Putting Values into Action

COMM 105: Values, Ethics, and Community

Purpose:

Values lay the foundation for your notions of how you should behave, but they do not necessarily dictate how you will behave. The future you envision for yourself is unlikely to materialize unless you make an effort to put your values into action. This assignment urges you to clarify the steps needed to craft a life and a career that best express your values.

Learning Objectives:

To create an imaginative and accountable representation of your values, goals, habits, and commitment to ethical behaviour, so that you will be inspired to revisit this plan at any time in order to check up on yourself and honour your commitment to a values-driven life.

Guidelines:

This assignment is due Sunday, October 6 at 10pm Pacific Time.

It is worth 20% of your overall course grade in COMM 105.

Submit on Canvas through the assignment dropbox. Convert your documents to PDF and combine all parts into a single PDF file for upload. Multiple files will not be accepted.

Use single-spaced 11-point Arial font, 1-inch (2.54cm) page margins, and 8.5x11 inch pages. Ensure your assignment is easy to read. Use section headers to organize your assignment. Write “(course concept)” after any course concept or framework that you reference in your work.

File naming convention: Last5NumbersOfStudent#-Sec#-AssignmentName.pdf (e.g. 12345-Sec101-PuttingValuesIntoAction.pdf).

This is an individual assignment. UBC policies regarding academic integrity and plagiarism apply. You may not work on this project with others.

AI is not permitted for this assignment. You may not use ChatGPT or other large language models for this assignment. The use of artificial intelligence tools will be considered cheating; see 3.b(iv) of the Vancouver Academic Calendar. Please keep all drafts and notes in case you are asked to demonstrate that you created this assignment without the use of AI.

Assignment components:

● Page 1: Cover Page

● Page 2-3: Values System Assessment - Schematic and Written Analysis

● Page 4-5: Goal Hierarchy - Schematic and Written Analysis

● Page 6: Habit Change Plan

● Page 7: “Dear Professor” Letter

● Page 8+: References List

Instructions:

Page 1: Cover page

Include the assignment title, your COMM 105 section number, and the last five digits of your student number. We will be uploading assignments to Turnitin, so to protect your privacy, please do not include your name or full student number anywhere in your assignment.

Page 2: Values System Assessment - Schematic

Map the core values you listed in Assignment 1: Discovering Values onto Schwartz’s circumplex model. To do this, identify where in the model each of your values fits best and overlay them onto the template of Schwartz’s model found in Canvas (see also the bottom of this document for a refresher on the definition of each of Schwartz’s value categories).

Note: You may revise the values that you listed in Assignment 1, and if you do, please include an additional sentence at the bottom of this page explaining why you decided to make this change (this does not count towards your word count).

Page 3: Values System Assessment - Written Analysis (maximum 250 words)

Provide an overall assessment of the consistency of your core value system. How likely do you think you are to experience tension between your values on a day-to-day basis, based on what the Schwartz model is telling you? In addition, identify the two values that you think have the greatest potential for tension in future situations. Explain why.

Page 4: Goal Hierarchy - Schematic

Create a goal hierarchy schematic, representing three of your most important SMART goals at the top of the hierarchy. These goals can be related to anything that is personally meaningful to you, whether they are outcomes that you hope to achieve or things you want to do. There is no time limit for your goals - they might take a month, a year, a decade, or more to achieve.

The goal hierarchy should have at least two layers of sub-goals below the top-level goals (i.e. a minimum of three layers of goals). View the graphic from our Self-regulation, Goals, and Habits lesson. Your schematic should look similar, but expanded to include three high-level goals.

When finished your goal hierarchy will look something like this, though you may have more than this number of goals at each level. It’s up to you to determine how your goals link across levels:

Note: You are welcome to format this page in landscape orientation if you prefer.

Page 5: Goal Hierarchy - Written Analysis (300 word maximum)

Include a written rationale for why you structured your goal hierarchy the way you did (i.e., the way it is organized into different levels and the way the goals are connected between levels).

In other words, what are the properties of your hierarchy that make it more likely that you will achieve the higher-level goals? In your answer, clearly refer to course concepts from our Self-regulation, Goals, and Habits lesson. Although not required, incorporating some external research from academic sources (e.g., research related to goal setting, goal hierarchies, or self-regulation) is a plus.

Page 6: Habit Change Plan (400 word maximum)

List three new habits that you could develop to help you achieve some of the goals you listed above, and identify which goal(s) these habits are meant to support. Then, briefly describe a plan for how you will develop those new habits by using the habit cycle that was discussed in class.

Your answer should clearly demonstrate an understanding of how the habit cycle works, including a description of each component of the cycle (cue, routine, and reward) for each habit.

Page 7: “Dear Professor” Letter (400 word maximum)

Commit to making a difference at UBC Sauder. This is a great time to recognize and declare that the only person who controls your behaviour and your experience is you, and that you can have a profound impact on others and on our world-class school.

Your task is to write a letter to your professor, dated the day you plan to graduate, explaining not what you learned in business school, but who you became at business school. Describe how your experiences at Sauder made you a better person, and how you translated that into humbly and positively affecting your fellow students, the staff, the faculty, the culture at Sauder, and the reputation of UBC as a whole.

In your letter, talk about at least one, specific, ethical dilemma that you faced during your time at Sauder, and how you dealt with it. Obviously, you will be making this up. However, imagining the kinds of moral quandaries you are likely to face in the future, and how you will deal with them, is a crucial step in your ethical development and preparation. Make sure to clearly incorporate course concepts from the framework for moral decision-making that was introduced in Class 6 (Behavioural Ethics) in your framing of the hypothetical ethical problem, and what you will need to do (both internally and behaviorally) to be proud of that decision when you graduate.

This is a big responsibility, but you’ve got this – and making the contributions you describe is going to set you up for a worthy future and a contented life. Please sign off the letter simply as, “Your Former Student.”