Water Scarcity Winter 2016UNST 421 515- Onlinecapstonesyllabus

Water Scarcity Winter 2016UNST 421_515- OnlineCapstoneSyllabus

Class Instructor:Andy Reed

OfficeHours-Theclass is fullyonline,Ihave no physical presence atPSU.Youmay email me atmy official PSUemail ofusing your regular PSUemail or any externalemail orcall or text me at503-317-1902. It will be my goal to return messages within 24 hours. Also, please feel free to refer to me as ‘Andy’ in communication.

Water Scarcity Background:

The class will work alongside Water4 Foundation ( a non-profit that is focused on water scarcity issues. Students will address needs affecting the field of water scarcity. Students may participate in the following forms of service-learning:

•Research cultural practices and country dynamics to assist NGOs transition into new markets;

•Research water technologies, benefits/drawbacks of each, identify best practices; and

•Survey water scarcity activities, map out industry trends, and conduct gap analysis.

According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), “1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, face economic water shortage (where countries lack the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers)”.

The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, recently said that places with “shortages of water contribute to poverty. They cause social hardship and impede development. They create tensions in conflict-prone regions. Too often, where we need water we find guns. [...] There is still enough water for all of us - but only so long as we keep it clean, use it more wisely, and share it fairly."

Main Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Define current trends in the water scarcity field, with a focus on international community development;
• Demonstrate an ability to work collaboratively with professionals and with other students;
• Distinguish the underlying causes for water scarcity and what is being done to addresses these causes;
• Understand the links between conflict and water scarcity;
• Develop and strengthen presentation and advocacy skills; and
• Identify tangible impacts of their work to address water scarcity concerns.

University Studies Goals

1. Critical Thinking: Students will be required to use all elements of critical thinking skills, including, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, and explanation in creating materials for the partner organization. They will assess their own biases along the way during Discussion postings and mid-year and final reflections. The information they present must be accurate and useful, as the Water4 Foundation will disseminate materials to a variety of partners around the world.

Students will be required to make links between their current tasks and their impact on future classes and Water4 Foundation, and think critically about processes along the way.

2. Communication: Students will have the opportunity to develop new communication skills via interactions with Water4 Foundation, the instructor, fellow students, and people in the community. Depending on each student’s task and the current state of the project, they may have opportunities to:

• Interview refugees/asylee/immigrants as cultural informants;
• Produce, write, and edit findings in formal reports to professional standards;
• Reflect on what they are learning via online discussion postings;
• Conduct research, which may require speaking with professionals in the field, such as at UNICEF, World Vision, or other NGOs; and/or
• Create other forms of communication that will be required as Water4 Foundation establishes more specific details of what kinds of products will be useful to them.

3. Variety of Human Experience (Diversity): Students will complete an exercise on values. This exercise comes from the field of project management, which helps participants to see how their own values often align/conflict with other’s values, which can create misunderstandings, conflict, and other issues. For example, if a student identifies during research a cultural practice or norm that does not align with their value system, this exercise will help them to see how diverse and variety the human experience really is.

Students will participate in group discussions, through technology such as Skype, conference calling software, or D2L, and will be asked to identify their own biases and stereotypes through a variety of exercises. During these discussions, the instructor will link their processing with the role of appreciating, or being curious about the variety of human experiences. The goal will be to help students (as needed) to move from a more ‘judgment’ worldview, to a more ‘inquisitive’ worldview, and acknowledge the value of others.

4. Ethical and Social Responsibility: Water scarcity is one of the biggest issues that our world faces, as a quarter of the globe’s inhabitants do not have access to clean water. Students will learn their role as a ‘global citizen’, as they experience through interactions with those affected by water scarcity and through research about the topic. They will learn how a lack of basic resources leads to all kinds of other societal concerns such as conflict, immigration, and public health issues.

Finally, students will participate in tangible work that will help Water4 Foundation and their partners to better serve their communities affected by water scarcity. By doing the project, they will be acting in a socially responsible way. Students will be completing projects that demonstrate that they have skills to make positive and lasting changes in the world.

CourseDetails

With your service-learning project, youwill notbe toldspecificallywhattodo,only generally whatneeds tobe done.Strongerlearning can occur when studentslearn totrusttheirown voice and own solutions.Youwill be shown all thenecessary basics but each and every major decision along theway will be made by you individually,withinyour groups (if groups are assigned) and by the class as a whole. The milestones set forth below will keep us all on track.

More importantly,you'llbe able torecognize more readily thesubtleshiftin directionas a projectmoves closer tosuccess or closer toproblems and be able toapply thisknowledge atan earlier pointin thefutureon your own.

Iseek toincrease your criticalthinkingskills,your leadership and teamskills and your abilitytocreatesomething thathas actualmeasurable influencein theworld.

Milestones and Time Management:

Milestone: an action or event marking a significant change or stage in development.

“Milestones are constructed to provide reference points along the road. This can be used to reassure travelers that the proper path is being followed, and to indicate either distance travelled or the remaining distance to a destination.” (Wikipedia)

To orient you with the variety of tasks in this class, I’ve provide you a legend with various symbols:

Symbols:

⁂Assignment Due in D2L—it will be graded

Milestones #1 thru #10

※Main Objective/Assignment for the Milestone

• Tasks within a particular Milestone

Blue text Hyperlink to an online website, article, or video

This course is designed in a specific order, whereby it will be difficult to complete future milestones (or assignments) without going in order. So time management will be very important to maintain the proper flow. You will notice that some items have deadlines, others don’t.

Milestone #1: Technology for Class

※ Get comfortable with Desire to Learn (D2L) and other tools to be used in class. These include:

• Checking to make sure computer works with D2L. If you have trouble logging in, please click here for instructions:
• D2L:
• Home Page News Feed: this is very important as all instructions will be placed here—make sure you click on the ‘Show All’ at the bottom of the news feed to find older posts
• Course Content
• Discussions
• Dropbox
• Google Docs:
• Conference Calls: For call instructions, click on this link:

⁂ 1) Read ‘Writing Effective Discussion Postings’ in Google Docs:

2) Post Discussion #1 in D2L using the ‘Writing Effective Discussion Postings’ process.

This activity is needed to complete all Milestones and D2L Discussion postings.

• Call into a class conference call to discuss the course/project with instructor/other students:

The call in time for this initial discussion is: Friday, January 8th at 7:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time). If you are unable to make call, I will record the session, and you can call the Conference Call number and play-back the discussion. Upon participating, please send me a confirmation email so I have everyone’s best contact information.

See Instructions listed above to access the conference calling number.During this call, I will give you a chance to ask questions about the syllabus, discuss technology we will use, give a summary of how this class began and where it’s going into the future, and go over expectations for the class.

This activity is needed to complete all future milestones.

Milestone #2: Skills, Talents, and Abilities

※ Identify your skills, talents, abilities, and resources that can be useful for the project

⁂ 1) Create a document that highlights your skills, talents, abilities, and resources:

2) Submit filled out document by the date listed in D2L in the Dropbox. This will be used to identify what part of the service-learning project you will participate in throughout the term.

This document is needed to complete future milestones such as Milestone #6.

Milestone #3: Water Scarcity Background Information

※ Read/watch the following materials on water scarcity

• Open Forum 2012: Water: Scarcity and Stress:
• A global perspective on Water Scarcity and Poverty:
• UNICEF Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water, 2014 update:

• UN Video Library
• Click on Videos by topic on the top right of the UN Video Library page
• Watch 6 videos (average length is 4-6 minutes each)

⁂ 1) Write a Discussion Posting (#2) responding to the publications and videos.

Your writing should include the following:

• New information you learned (highlight three key issues related to water scarcity)
• How your service-learning project can positively impact these issues
• Reflect on your relationship with water—do you take it for granted? Does it affect your local community?

⁂ 2) Post this response in the 'Discussion' section in D2L using the ‘Writing Effective Discussion Postings’ process.

Completing this assignment is needed to complete Milestone #4, #6, and #7.

Milestone #4: Water Scarcity Research Assignment (Phase 1 of 3)

※ Phase 1 of the water project will be to get familiar with the kinds of products we may produce by the end of the term (this will vary term to term, based on community partner needs)

Project Template:

The Template is a work in progress. This class will help me to adapt it as we get new categories of information to add to the project

Water Scarcity Project Charter:

This document provides guidance for this class, and future classes in Objective, Scope, Success Criteria for the project. This is also a work in progress, but will serve as a roadmap for the community partner, faculty, and students:

Read Water Scarcity Project Samples: I will attach samples to the ‘News Feed’ in D2L at the proper time.

While no documents are due in D2L, reading/studying these documents will be important to complete Milestone #6-#10.

Milestone #5: Values Exercise

You will find 4 attached documents to the ‘News Feed’ in D2L to complete this Values Exercise assignment.

⁂

1. Write a reflection on the Values Exercise using the instructions provided in D2L. Your writing should include general information about what you learned from taking the inventory and how your values relate to the topic of water scarcity. The instructions will give you more details about how to accomplish this.
2. Use the ‘Writing Effective Discussion Postings’ process (see Milestone #1)
3. Submit your reflection in D2L in the Drop Box.

Milestone #6: Community Partner/Project assignment is established (Phase 2 of 3)

※ Each student will participate in this capstone in one of the Focal Areas. The decision regarding who will do what will be made based on 1) skill sets (see Milestone #2), 2) what each student prefers, and 3) what the community partner has requested of our class that term. All three of these will be taken into consideration when determining project tasks by each student.

To the second factor listed above (what each student prefers) students should take under consideration other priorities in their life. For example, if you are aware you will be very busy in week 6 of the class (or out of town), you might consider requesting to do a portion of the project that does not have due dates in week 6. Regardless, please communicate scheduling conflicts with both your instructor and fellow classmates so we do not see delays in completing the project.

Focal Areas (mainfunction-groups)

Research: Responsible forgatheringaccuratedata,fromclient, instructor, and/or throughresearch;

• Assuring accurate concept development,obtainingfeedbackfromclient and instructor as needed

Creative: Responsible fordeciding how besttopresentclient datausing colors,texture,graphics,illustrations,photos,videos,sound animationand interactivity.

• Makethesedecisions and createdocuments accordingly.
• Responsible for creating and updating templates to be used.
• Formatting photos and other media as needed.

Technical Writing: Responsible for writing from content produced by the Researchers.

• Check spelling, punctuation, formatting, flow, etc…
• Create surveys to be used by Researchers and by client related to water scarcity

Quality Control/Editing: Responsible for editing work produced by the Researchers and Writers.

• Communicate with the Writers to get clarification on data that is missing, needs extrapolation, etc…
• Use quality control to determine whether or not the writing meets the standards of the project to be delivered to the client.
• Test links, double check sources, citing, etc…
• Maintain document where all sources are cited, referenced to specific documents created by previous students/classes and update with new information.
• Serve as the point-of-contact for all students throughout the term. Keep project within scope and on time, per Milestone #7.

Web design/GIS/Analytics: Responsible for creating and maintaining website for the project.

• As new content is created, add to the website.
• Increase usage through website marketing tracksweb and blog site-meterresults, and applies lessons learned throughweb analytics.
• Use GIS to create tools to document water project activity around the globe.

Marketing/Social Media: Responsible for providing assist to client with social media efforts for fundraising campaigns and other marketing needed.

Other Projects as assigned: There might be a situation where a student or group of students does another kind of water scarcity related project.

Completing this assignment is needed to complete all remaining Milestones.

Milestone #7: Teams/Project Inception(Phase 3 of 3)

※ Students and instructor will begin to meet in teams and organize the scope of work for the term. Initially, I will be fairly involved in the layout of the project, but with time students will take ownership of the work, and I will serve as an advisor at key decision points.

Once teams are established, students will set a timeline for each portion of their project.

Milestone #8: Project Draft and Mid-Term Assessment Completed

※ There are two components to this Milestone, a Project Draft and a Mid-Term Assessment.

Approximately three weeks before the end of the term, a document which combines all of the student's work to date (Project Draft) and then write about how the process has gone so far (Mid-Term Assessment)

For the Project Draft, students will:

• summarize of work to date, including a rough draft of the project documents.
• This will likely be submitted by team working on quality control/editing but material will be contributed by all students.

For the Mid-Term Assessment, students will:

• Individually submit a reflection on what they've done to date on the project, what has gone well and what has not gone well in the process. I expect students to admit where they have struggled on the project (time management, effort, communication, etc...) as well as where they have had success. Where each student had concerns about his/her own contribution to the project, the reflection should include a explanation of what the student will do to improve in this area or to get their portion of the project back on track.

I will give feedback as necessary as the Mid-Term Assessments are turned into me (via D2L), and make sure if there are logjams or issues with the project moving forward, that the proper students are supporting in getting the project moving again. For example, if a student becomes ill for a couple weeks, and cannot do his/her part, I may shift some of his/her responsibilities to another student and give that student new tasks.

I will also send the Project Draft documents to Water4 for comments and feedback. The organization may request we shift our focus one way or another, and with that guidance, we may need to reset some of our current tasks.

Milestone #9: Final Project Completed/Turned In

※ Final products will be adapted to suit the partner organization’s needs on an ongoing basis. The initial project will include a report for the partner organization that will include quantitative and qualitative data about particular cultures and countries that could make Water4 Foundation’s transition into countries new to the organization much smoother, and allow them to better resource strategic field partners. This report then may be converted into other resources such as brochures, presentations, and websites if desired by Water4 Foundation.

Water4 may request that we also produce materials for social media and other forms of communication, using stories they have collected from practitioners in the field.