Assessment 1: Themes of Leadership Essay
Doctoral Assignment · August 2026
EDTC 802 | EDTC 6020
QE Rationale
This essay analyzes three leadership speeches — Brené Brown on vulnerability and empathy, Oprah Winfrey on connection across difference, and Jocko Willink on extreme ownership — to identify a common throughline: that leadership functions as a discipline of internal choices rather than a fixed trait or title. Synthesizing across a research career, international diplomacy, and battlefield leadership into a single argument reflects the comparative analysis foundational to this domain.
A comparative essay analyzing leadership styles and themes across three selected leadership speeches, focused on a handful of recurring themes and supported with direct quotation.
Outcomes
- Analyze major theories and models of leadership and evaluate their strengths, limitations, and applicability to educational technology leadership in diverse educational settings.
- Evaluate the relationship between technology, education, and organizational change by examining current issues, policies, and challenges affecting technology-rich learning environments.
- Apply leadership frameworks (e.g., trait, skills, servant, adaptive, inclusive, transformational, and authentic leadership) to authentic educational technology leadership scenarios and organizational challenges.
- Critically examine leadership perspectives by synthesizing ideas from scholarly literature, contemporary practitioners, and multimedia sources to identify recurring themes and evidence-based leadership principles.
- Develop and articulate a personal philosophy of educational technology leadership that reflects professional values, ethical decision-making, and a commitment to fostering innovation, equity, and organizational improvement.
- Communicate leadership ideas effectively through clear written and oral presentations that demonstrate critical thinking, scholarly support, and professional communication skills.
Related work
ETL Cohort Hub Portfolio Pipeline, Part 2
The technical build here is the smaller half of the story — the harder part was closing the gap between "I know how to do this" and "someone with zero technical background can actually finish it without me in the room." Most of the real fixes came from watching an actual classmate get stuck, not from re-testing my own assumptions.
Designed and built a portal-embedded wizard that lets non-technical cohort members generate their own QE-compliant portfolio site prompt — no code, no cost, backed by Google Sheets instead of a database they'd have to learn.
Assessment 2: Leadership Principles Video
EDTC 802 | EDTC 6020
A short recorded speech, delivered without notes, articulating one's personal leadership values and principles.
Assignment 4: Constructing Visual Aids
EDTC 803 | EDTC 6030
A short memorandum report featuring a single data visualization built from publicly available federal data on a workforce, economic, or education trend.
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