super villains

Super Villains!

Creative Leadership and Problem Solving | Online Exercise # 1

Introduction

Our first online exercise asks you to think about the characteristics and traits associated with ineffective leaders. Your challenge is to create a comic-book style super villain who embodies the most negative, toxic leadership traits imaginable, and draw upon our theoretical reading to contextualize and make explicit the design choices. You'll also have the opportunity to e-meet your colleagues and appreciate their ideas by providing affirmative comments.

Process

1. Complete this week's reading "Leadership Theories and Styles" and pay close attention to the traits, characteristics, and styles associated with outdated leadership practices.

2. Design a super villain who embodies relevant characteristics. Showcase their evil deeds on a comic-book style cover or movie poster.

a. Note, if you're drawing upon personal experience for inspiration, please try to anonymize the ideas, there's no need to publicly shame a poor leader.

b. Please do not use clip art programs to make your super villain, draw an original villain by hand or through an illustration application. The process is more important than the quality of the illustration, don’t worry about your illustration skills: have fun and enjoy the process, even if you’re making stick figures.

3. Author a minimum of 200 words of supporting discussion that draws upon the theoretical reading to explain and contextualize the design choices. Be sure to directly quote or paraphrase the reading, and document your research via MLA style.

4. Post your illustration and supporting discussion to the discussion board.

5. Read your classmate's posts and leave two affirmative comments that reiterate what you appreciate about your classmate's ideas. Be precise and avoid the superficial.

Evaluation

This online exercise is worth 5% of your final grade. Later, you'll have the opportunity to revise and further reflect upon the exercise via the Portfolio.

For this submission, the online exercise will be evaluated via degree of completion by answering ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the following statements:

1. The post included an illustration of the super villain.

2. The post included a minimum of 200 words of supporting discussion.

3. The post quoted or paraphrased a theoretical reading.

4. Quotes, paraphrases, and other sources were documented via MLA style.

5. The author provided affirmative comments on two other posts created by classmates.

Enjoy the experience, have fun interacting with classmates, and, if you lack artistic talent such as myself, don't worry too much about the quality of the illustration! Value emerges from the process, not the quality of the product.

Designed by Dr. Brandon McFarlane 2021