Link to Comparison between North American and South East Asian Case Studies

Link to an Analysis of the Literature

Link to Compiled Citations

Link to the South East Asian Workspace

Personal Reflections of the IDS Group Project

Katie’s Reflection:
           To be frank, I historically have hated group work. I have found the process more painful than enjoyable and more frustrating than fulfilling; mainly due to the ill distribution of workloads among group members. This in turn downgraded the learning experience, as group members rushed to complete work 5 minutes before the deadline, leaving no room for peer to peer discussion and consequently, learning. However, I am glad to say that this was not my experience with Sakina, Danielle, and Naseem. For the first time in my University career (and thats saying a lot given I am in my 4th and final year!) I not only enjoyed group work, but I learned something new from my group members. What facilitated such a different experience? I would have to say that 80% of the positive change had to do with the people I worked with and the other 30% had to do with the flexible and informal mediums we utilized within the course.
    Sakina, Danielle, and Naseem are diligent, intelligent, and mindful individuals who each have strong passions within and surrounding the field of International Development. These passions translated into engaging, educated, and enjoyable conversations around our case studies and course material. While the majority of our conversations usually dissolved into friendly banter and humor, it somehow was always related to the course material (mockery of Mitt Romney (related to Naseem’s case study) was one of the greatest conversation pieces along with our shared indignation of rights denials in Canada and the United States (where we often shared memes on facebook). The friendship that we developed fuelled our learning process, as we were able to discuss formal academic matter in informal settings. Our diverse backgrounds also facilitated our learning processes. Each one of us comes from a unique family setting, cultural understanding, and political background. While such differences often separate individuals, this diversity only enriched our conversations and provided new insight into familiar topics. While the positivity of this learning experience can be owed substantially to the individuals involved, the online and informal structure of the course itself also facilitated our/my learning experience.

While I have benefited from my time at U of T, one of my greatest criticisms or complaints surrounds U of T’s strict “brick and mortar” teaching model. While U of T is home to some of the best and brightest professors in their fields, listening to these professionals lecture for 3 hours a week does nothing to inspire love or interest in the material. Taking notes, doing readings, and studying by oneself does nothing to inspire students, rather it only teach them to stress over, and eventually hate the material they are given. For these reasons, I have enjoyed the informal and interactive nature of this course immensely. For me, the online Wiki took the formality and the associated stress out of academic learning. It allowed me to learn at my own pace and absorb the material as it suited by schedule. Further, the interactive features in the course (such as the text boxes at the end of each page) allowed me to interact with other students about the material; encouraging me to challenge and be challenged by alternative views. While I did not agree with all of my peers’ arguments, I enjoyed the process of tweezing and parcelling out meaning within texts, through friendly debate. The course material and the assignments themselves also encouraged personal enrichment and peer to peer learning; lending themselves to be molded by the students. While we were provided assignments such as the group project and the blog post, we were able to choose the material on which we focused. Such choice, reinvigorated my love of academia. It allowed to utilize course material to study areas that I truly enjoyed and cared about (Marriage Equality in my home state of Maine). Me, and my classmates passion for their topics further facilitated greater peer to peer learning. Passion in writing and academic work makes the material much more inviting and enjoyable. Seeing my peers’ passion for their topics only invigorated my interest and desire to engage in debate around their topics. However, while I did enjoy this course, there is always room for improvement, mainly in the area of communication between Professor, TA, and student.

The Wiki, and the associated platforms such as Twitter and Facebook facilitated communication between students, however I felt that this was not the case between Professor, TA, and students. While as students, we were provided details regarding assignments, we had no easy way of posing questions or getting timely responses from course organizers. We could post questions to the Wiki, however responses often took numerous days. This is due in large part to the expansive nature of the wiki; questions spread out over numerous pages. And also in part to the lack of opportunities for communication outside the Wiki. While my classmates and I were able to communicate via Facebook, Twitter, and text, and consequently ask questions and receive answers from each other immediately, no such alternative existed for the TA or Professor. This lack of accessibility was further exacerbated by unclear and convoluted course requirements and assignments. I felt that Stage 4 and its associated requirements in particular were not clearly communicated. My group faced significant difficulty in deciphering what was expected in the last assignment. Given these difficulties, I would suggest the introduction of a weekly chat between students, the TA, and the Professor (Skype, GoogleChat, MSN, Livechat). This would allow students the ability to discuss any questions regarding course material (a kind of virtual office hour). All in all though, I truly enjoyed this course.

Danielle’s Reflection:

     To reflect oneself online collaboration effort, one would start off by saying that it was a pleasure in working with the other three members of North America.  Given that we have never met each other before, working alongside each other in completing the group work felt successful.  The group managed to collaborate and share informative ideas through Facebook.  Being that Facebook was the medium for our group; one can see who was active through updates and posts.  It was easier to keep in touch via Facebook because messages were saved and it was easily accessible.  Throughout the duration of the group work, one finds that the distribution of efforts was even.  Equally amongst the group were members who were able to initiate productivity.  

To improve on the process of this exercise, the framework of the project should be created in a much more concrete layout and homogenous; rather than a layout where students were able to manipulate the project.  Being that this was an online course, much of the work was to be completed on one’s own time; therefore for the project to be molded by the students.  A pro for this project was that there was much freedom for students to interact with their own findings, and allowed for students to learn of ICT collaborations of their own interests.  A con for this project would be that group members were not all on board for the project, which made it difficult for other groups to collaborate with in Stage 4.  Also each group has their own formatting and layout in their workspaces; which made it confusing to analyze and compare.   To improve on this issue, there should be a framework or layout which all groups should work with; rather than have to make up their layout.  This project has allowed one to understand how it would be like to collaborate with the many contexts that the course has taught.  

An example would be to actively participate with group members/peers as Mark Federman’s philosophy of education and learning has highlighted.  After this project, there is an understanding of the complexity of the many interfaces of communication to organize and creatively plan out ideas.  There are many processes of planning; from observing a data to framing an idea.  There are many more medium to communicate than just Facebook; like Google Documents.  With the helpfulness and patience from the teaching leaders and peers, this project was able to be completed in the duration of the time given; furthermore one feels that the contexts and goals of this course were applied within this project.

Naseem’s Reflection:

     I feel that the group element of this project was a success. At first,  I was very sceptical of group work because in my experience, the work distribution is often unequal. However, this group project managed to alter my negative perception of group work. I feel that the North American group, consisting of myself, Katie, Danielle and Sukaina, worked extremely well together. Despite being complete strangers, we all communicated very well with each other and took the initiative of getting our tasks done and ensuring that work was evenly distributed. I feel as though I’ve known these girls for a longer period than I actually do. If one of us did not understand something, the other was there to assist. If one of us were struggling to finish something, there was someone to step in and lend a hand. If I could work with a group like this for all of my classes, group work would be extremely preferable.

We were also able to take advantage of ICT mechanisms to stay in touch, like Facebook and the “Wiki” page. These two interfaces made open knowledge sharing, a key component to this class, very possible and easy. We were able to read each others thoughts and feedback easily accessible through Facebook and we were able to accomplish the comparative analysis, to South East Asia, easily through the Wiki page where all of their information is laid out for the class to see. This eased the process of possibly having to contact them for useful information. It was all there for us to see

In terms of the execution of the project, I also feel that this was successful. The project allowed the North America to examine extremely different cases regarding various issues throughout the continent. We all learnt about different causes throughout North America and the initiative that our organizations took to combat the issue using technological means available to us. However the assignment also allowed us to compare our projects and look for similarities between the organizations despite vast differences in what they hope to achieve. For example, all of our organizations were generally aimed at fighting for human rights. However, each group looked at different groups looking for rights (ex. women, same sex couples, Aboriginals, students). We were able to take these vastly different groups and merge them into a project that allowed them to connect. Furthermore, we were able to compare it with a completely different continent, Asia.  This project was fun to do and allowed us to draw parallels between organizations that may have not otherwise been linked. It was relevant to the course in the sense that we got to see how they share their information through ICT mechanisms and all used methods of open access to share information with citizens and make them aware of what is going on, through blog posts, campaigns, petitions and articles.

While I enjoyed this project, I feel that it could have been executed in a way that more so allows students to really get a feel of what it is like to be the one providing citizens with open access and be the one to execute an ICT based campaign. Perhaps a project that allows students to collaboratively build an “organization” that takes elements of all the organizations we looked at would be relevant. It would allow us to figure out how to get awareness out and how to get people to support us, primarily through ICT. However, because of the uneven distribution that group work has the potential for (not referring to this group), this may not necessarily work. If a group is able to work together and communicate well however, then I feel confident that this would be a rewarding and fun project! This is not to say that I did not enjoy the one we did for IDSB10, it is simply an alternative suggestion.

Sukaina’s Reflection:

They say everything has its first time. This was my first ever group project and my first ever research on Canada. My case study project began by getting myself signed up with complete strangers, people who I had never met but had to work with me  as a collaborative group, this gave me the opportunity to understand diversity and taught me that in life you don’t always pick who to work with. And that the earth and more importantly educational systems have diverse groups of people. Today after spending months working with this group I can successfully say that I couldn’t have asked for better. Honestly, at the beginning of the project and probably to date every time I have difficulty in a certain aspect or concept of the group, my group members are always there patiently explaining. Each individual looking at a specific organization conducted stage two. I looked into Canadian Federation of Students association Ontario. This was a foreign concept to me, as never had I heard of student debt or loans from the government where I came from. Doing my research I realized the unbelievably high amount of debt students are in, I realized that in Canada there are organizations that aim to get their voices heard whether its for the purpose of political, social or an environmental aspect. This second stage of the group broadened by knowledge of the country that I now formally live in, It also gave me a better understanding of how ICT is used as a catalyst in these organizations, it gave me the inside depth of how powerful ICT and citizens voices are. The third part of the project allowed me to compare my work with other members of the group, to understand how organizations in the same continent work, whether they are similar, whether they use the same methods to convey their message or what differences these organizations had. The use of the spicynodes was a new concept to me that was introduced by Naseem. I learnt a new aspect of technology and a new gadget in the modern ICT world. The final part of the project is here, where I write my reflection and remind myself what I have had to experience throughout this group project, there came times where I almost felt like I wont be able to reach the standard, I cant do it. But my group members were always there, reminding me that we are almost there. The analysis and conclusions drawn from the annotated bibliographies helped me link other real life situations and studies to the project I was working with and gave me a better understanding. And finally the comparison to other organizations such as South East Asia allowed me to understand the different methods outside the continent boarders.

. What I have taken and learnt from my first group project would probably be one of the most vital experiences. I learnt that in life, be it school or different countries: when we join dots, find solutions and problems together and help one another. There will be no place for difficulty in this country. And that’s the solution to development.