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📓 DEI Reflective Assignments

Overview of DEI Reflections​

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) curriculum at Epicodus includes quarterly workshops, lessons integrated throughout each learning track, and reflective assignments for each lesson. We outline the DEI curriculum in the lesson Making Epicodus an Inclusive Place.

In this lesson, we'll discuss the reflective assignments that are tied to each DEI lesson. We also call these assignments “personal reflections”, in which you'll be given a prompt that you'll write a short, reflective response to. You will write one personal reflection for every DEI lesson. The DEI lessons are integrated throughout each learning course, however you can find every DEI lesson listed here to get a preview of what's to come. To help you stay on track with theses assignments, at the end of every DEI lesson, we remind students to write their personal reflection and share a link to the reflection prompt on Epicenter.

Engaging in these reflective assignments is optional, but highly encouraged! Whereas our workshops are focused on group work, these reflective assignments are an opportunity for you to reflect and engage with important DEI topics by yourself.

How These Assignments Work​

You will write your personal reflection directly in Epicenter. Similar to CRs, reflection prompts will have their own page on Epicenter with a text box input. You can write and keep your personal reflections in a location other than Epicenter, however, when you are finished writing it, you'll need to copy over your reflection into the text box on Epicenter. When you select the button to submit your response, it will be recorded in Epicenter.

Every reflective assignment is automatically assigned a pass/fail status based on whether you've submitted a response or not. Your response can be long or short — whatever suits you. However, you must write a response in order for the assignment to be considered passing. There is no grade or staff feedback. However, staff will periodically review responses.

You can edit your personal reflections by returning to the prompt and directly editing your response in the text box. Once you are satisfied, simply click "Resubmit" to record your changes. As long as you are enrolled in or an alum of Epicodus, you can access and update any reflection you write.

If you do not want to engage with a reflection prompt, please write in "decline" as your response.

Finding the Reflection Prompts​

The reflection prompt is found on Epicenter in the same course that the DEI lesson reading is assigned. In the homepage of every technical course on Epicenter, there are code reviews listed as well as personal reflection prompts.

For example, in “Arrays and Looping”, the third section of the Introduction to Programming course, we assign the lesson Equity versus Equality. That means the reflection prompt for “Equity versus Equality” can be found on Epicenter in the Introduction to Programming course.

To make things straightforward, every DEI lesson has a link at the bottom of the page that you can click to navigate directly to the reflection prompt on Epicenter.

If you Follow these steps to find the reflection prompt for the DEI lesson you finished reading:

  1. Log into Epicenter.
  2. If you are not already on this page, select Courses from the navigation bar at the top of the page.
  3. Select your current course.
  4. Then, look for the Personal reflections section within that course.
  5. Find and select the reflection that matches the title of the DEI lesson. This will open the submission page with the reflection prompt.

Giving Feedback​

We hope you find these reflective assignments to be thought-provoking! We always welcome feedback on your experience of the DEI curriculum, including these reflective assignments. We outline all of the ways you can give feedback in the student handbook.