🎯 Course Purpose: Beyond Tools—Teaching Risk as Leadership

CIS 95C: Risk Assessment and Mitigation – A Practicum is not a traditional lecture-based course. It is a problem-based learning experience that invites students to think, act, and reflect like risk strategists inside a simulated real-world organization (SMDC – Self-Managed Diabetic Care Inc.).

The course teaches how to recognize, prioritize, and respond to risk—not just with tools like matrices or checklists, but with empathy, systems thinking, and leadership awareness.

Students work through twelve milestone scenarios—each simulating a high-stakes task faced by a startup team in healthtech. By the end, students create a professional-grade risk portfolio that demonstrates technical, strategic, and emotional fluency in risk leadership.

🧑‍🏫 The Role of the Instructor: Facilitator, Coach, and Cultural Guide

You are not just evaluating deliverables. You are guiding students through:

• Ambiguity and emotional complexity

• Tradeoffs and incomplete information

• Communication and collaboration tensions

• Their own mindset evolution as decision-makers

Your key responsibilities:

• Create a safe learning space for risk reflection, discussion, and feedback

• Model real-world thinking and iterative design—not perfection

• Normalize confusion, misalignment, and uncertainty as part of the risk learning process

• Encourage emotional literacy (SEW model), communication practices, and team rituals

• Give feedback not just on correctness—but on clarity, leadership, and growth

✅ This is a leadership lab disguised as a risk management course.

💡 Learning Outcomes and Transformational Goals

While students gain practical experience with tools like the RBS, Impact Matrix, and Decision Tree, the real learning is deeper:

🔄 What Makes This Course Different

🧰 What Instructors Have at Their Disposal

Throughout this guide and the textbook, you’ll find:

• ✅ A complete milestone set with instructions, tools, and rubrics

• ✅ A glossary and appendix of all tools and frameworks

• ✅ Editable templates for RBS, control checklists, decision trees, and more

• ✅ Reflection prompts, collaboration rituals, and SEW-based practices

• ✅ Optional white paper and presentation activities for deeper integration

You do not need to be a risk expert to teach this course effectively. You only need to:

• Believe that risk is teachable

• Model uncertainty as curiosity

• Provide structure, safety, and feedback for students to explore discomfort productively

Section 2: Teaching Approach

How to Teach a Practicum-Centered, Scenario-Based Risk Course

🔧 What Makes This a Practicum

Unlike content-heavy lecture courses, CIS 95C is designed as a learning-by-doing experience. Students are immersed in a simulation where risk is not just discussed—it is:

• Modeled

• Misunderstood

• Debated

• Managed

• Lived

Each of the 12 milestones is framed as a real task from inside SMDC (Self-Managed Diabetic Care Inc.), a fictional healthtech startup with real-world dynamics:

• Tight timelines

• Patient-centered consequences

• Cross-functional conflicts

• High emotional and ethical stakes

Students are not just asked to apply tools—they must also process ambiguity, pressure, tradeoffs, and silence, just as real teams must do in live projects.

👩‍🏫 Your Role as a Practicum Instructor

Your central goal is to help students:

• Experience risk from multiple perspectives (technical, human, strategic)

• Reflect on what they feel and observe—not just what they produce

• Build fluency in tools, frameworks, and team dynamics

• Integrate learning across time—not milestone by milestone, but system by system

This means you’ll act as a:

💡 Pedagogical Foundations

🔄 Weekly Flow (Sample)

🤝 Team-Based vs. Individual Formats

This course can be taught either individually or in teams.

✅ Pro tip: Rotate roles (e.g., PM, Risk Lead, Patient Advocate, Technical Owner) to help students experience power shifts and responsibility sharing.

📦 Milestone as Weekly Core

Each week or class cycle is anchored by one milestone:

1. Instructor introduces scenario (via memo)

2. Students plan approach using tools provided

3. Teams collaborate, sketch, and test

4. Instructor facilitates real-time coaching

5. Students submit deliverables + reflection

6. Feedback focuses on process and insight

🧩 Integrating Tools, Models, and Mindsets

Each milestone is scaffolded with:

• Templates (Appendix A)

• Toolkits (e.g., Impact Matrix, Fishbone, RBS)

• Culture models (SEW, Communication Frames, Memory Systems)

As an instructor, you can:

• Preload templates into Canvas

• Facilitate modeling sessions live

• Use real-time annotation to walk through decision tree logic or stakeholder misalignment

• Pause to ask: “What SEW signals are showing up in this moment?”

🧠 When Students Get Stuck

Expect moments of:

• Paralysis (not knowing how to start)

• Surface-level answers (defaulting to tools without reflection)

• Misalignment (team members pulling in different directions)

• Confusion (over purpose vs. product)

When this happens:

• Reground in the milestone memo—What is the problem to solve?

• Ask reflective prompts: “What are you assuming? What feels unclear? What are you avoiding?”

• Use the SEW Model to name emotional blocks

• Affirm that discomfort = progress in a practicum

📅 Recommended Course Structure: 12 Weeks, 12 Milestones

Each milestone in CIS 95C: Risk Assessment and Mitigation – A Practicum is designed to represent 1 week of immersive learning, with built-in flexibility to:

• Compress into 8–10 weeks (with combined modules)

• Extend into 14–16 weeks (with deeper reflection or presentations)

• Adapt to hybrid, asynchronous, or team-based formats

🧩 Course Phases and Flow

🔄 Week-by-Week Pacing Overview

📚 Alternate Schedules

🧭 Time-on-Task Recommendations (Per Milestone)

Adjust up or down depending on team size, course level, or format.

🧠 Key Milestones That Anchor Learning

If compressed, prioritize:

• M1 – Risk Structuring

• M2 – Prioritization

• M4 – Control Design

• M8 – Stakeholder Synthesis

• M9 – Resource-Based Prioritization

• M12 – Capstone Reflection

Here is the full draft of:

🎯 Grading Philosophy

The evaluation model for CIS 95C reflects the course’s practicum nature:

• Students are not assessed on right/wrong answers

• They are assessed on their ability to apply tools, make decisions, justify tradeoffs, and reflect meaningfully

This course integrates:

• Technical accuracy (use of tools, logic, prioritization)

• Strategic clarity (framing, synthesis, stakeholder sense-making)

• Reflective depth (metacognition, emotional fluency, leadership voice)

• Process awareness (collaboration, follow-through, revision)

You are encouraged to grade for growth, not perfection—rewarding learning and leadership evolution.

📊 Suggested Grade Breakdown (Sample)

📋 Milestone Evaluation Rubric (General Template)

📘 Capstone Portfolio Rubric (M12 + 4.2.1)

✍️ Reflection Grading Tips

Reflections are not graded for grammar or polish. They are graded for:

• Depth: Did the student go beyond obvious answers?

• Ownership: Do they name their own blind spots, growth, and reactions?

• Insight: Did they learn something transferable about risk, leadership, or collaboration?

Use short feedback prompts like:

“This is a strong insight—could you connect it to another milestone?”
“Interesting emotion pattern—what decision did it shape?”
“How would you teach this to a new team?”

👥 Grading Team-Based Projects

If using groups:

• Require a collaboration log (who did what, challenges, lessons)

• Use 360 peer evaluations for milestones 4, 8, and 12

• Include team roles as part of rubric: Did the Risk Lead guide? Did the Communicator facilitate?

Encourage rotating roles to avoid invisible labor or silos.

🧩 Optional Peer Feedback

You may add peer review for:

• RBS (Milestone 1)

• Stakeholder map (M3/M8)

• Final recommendations (M12/4.2.2)

Students can give feedback using structured prompts:

• “What’s clear?”

• “What’s missing?”

• “What tradeoff surprised you?”

• “What would you do differently with this model?”

🎯 Purpose of This Section

This section equips instructors with practical techniques to:

• Facilitate class sessions and group work

• Support emotional safety and risk fluency

• Prompt metacognition and team-based learning

• Run structured check-ins, retrospectives, and feedback sessions

These tools are especially helpful for:

• Group-based versions of CIS 95C

• Live or synchronous instruction

• Weekly milestone coaching

• Capstone debrief sessions

🧠 Tool 1: SEW-Based Check-In Prompts

Use to build emotional awareness of risk perception (Sensation–Emotion–Want)

When to Use:

• Start of class or workshop

• End-of-milestone debrief

• During difficult decisions or feedback

Prompts:

1. “What’s something that made you pause or feel uneasy during this milestone?” (Sensation)

2. “What emotion came up for you while making your decision?” (Emotion)

3. “What did you want to do in that moment—act, avoid, defer?” (Want)

4. “What was hardest to say out loud during this sprint?”

5. “What question are we not asking—but should be?”

Facilitator Tip: Use a timer or allow 1–2 minutes of quiet journaling before sharing.

🪩 Tool 2: Friction Forums

Mini-ritual to normalize productive disagreement and early escalation

How it Works:

• Hold a 15–20 minute space where anyone can bring up:

  • A conflict or disagreement

  • A discomfort that hasn’t been addressed

  • A risk they feel is being downplayed or ignored

Facilitation Prompts:

• “What felt off this week, even if it wasn’t ‘urgent’?”

• “What feedback was hard to give—or hard to receive?”

• “What are we pretending not to see?”

Group Norms:

• No immediate fixing

• Listen to understand

• Notes are taken, patterns tracked

🧠 Pro Tip: Rotate the “Friction Host” role weekly so all voices are normalized.

🔁 Tool 3: Weekly Micro-Retrospectives

Short, consistent ritual to reinforce team learning and risk visibility

Use this format at the end of each milestone:

🧠 Bonus: Keep a “Retro Archive” so teams can track memory and evolution.

🧩 Tool 4: Decision Debrief Prompts

Use when students complete decision modeling, tradeoff selection, or control prioritization

Ask:

• “What values shaped this decision?”

• “What did we choose to optimize—and what did we accept as a tradeoff?”

• “What made this decision difficult emotionally or interpersonally?”

• “How would another stakeholder frame this differently?”

Encourage students to reflect not just on the model—but the conversation behind it.

🧾 Tool 5: Reflection Prompts (Anytime)

These work well in discussion forums, 1:1 journals, or peer response sessions

General Prompts:

• “How did your understanding of risk change in this milestone?”

• “What was your strongest moment of insight—and what triggered it?”

• “What question stayed with you after this activity?”

• “What did you learn about decision-making in uncertainty?”

• “How did your thinking evolve from Milestone 1 to now?”

👥 Tool 6: Peer Feedback Frames

Supports trust-building and cross-team learning

Use structured peer review cycles in M4, M8, or M12. Provide a feedback scaffold:

🔄 Use live, async, or video peer review to accommodate different learning modes.

🎯 Purpose of This Section

CIS 95C: Risk Assessment and Mitigation – A Practicum is designed to be modular, cross-disciplinary, and adaptable. This section gives instructors practical options for tailoring the course to different learning environments, timeframes, student profiles, and industries—without sacrificing rigor or cohesion.

🧭 Delivery Format Customizations

📚 Disciplinary Adaptations

🕒 Timeframe and Course Length Customizations

🧩 Use Case Variations

🧠 Optional Enhancements

📦 Overview

This section lists all the essential tools, templates, and resources available to help instructors:

• Teach and adapt each milestone

• Evaluate student work fairly and consistently

• Encourage team-based collaboration and reflection

• Save time with ready-made materials

All items can be downloaded, copied, or linked from the course shell, OER repository, or appendix.

📁 Included Resources (by Type)

✅ Final Tip: Teaching as Risk Modeling

You’re not just assigning tasks. You’re modeling:

• How to notice risk early

• How to name discomfort clearly

• How to design with uncertainty in mind

• How to lead without control—but with clarity, curiosity, and care