Tags
GC
Admissions requirements
By application only.
Please note: Students must submit an application in order to be considered for admission. This application should comprise a brief statement (no more than 300 words) explaining:
1) their personal motivations for wishing to take this class, and
2) how this course would complement their study plan.
In addition, students should also include a list of courses they have completed which they feel might prepare them well for this course. Selection will be based on the strength of students’ motivations and with an eye towards achieving in the classroom between students with different kinds of expertise.
Applications should be sent to globalclassroomluc@gmail.com. The deadline for the application is 1 January 2017, 23.59 hrs.
Description
Solutions to today’s global development challenges are often pursued in the context of inter-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborations. Such collaborative ventures typically rely on online communication and learning technologies. This project-based, blended (part traditional, part online) course “Doing Development: Global Collaborative Pursuits in Development Design and Implementation” will prepare you for such development realities.
In this course, you will work in teams made up of students from LUC, the University of Maryland, and University College Dublin. Each team is challenged to build expertise around a specific problem that has been sourced from a number of participating development clients in The Hague, Washington D.C., and Dublin. Clients in previous iterations of the course included USAID, Chemonics International, and the World Bank; similar clients will participate in this course.
Each team’s goal is to design a solution--a development project--to address the client’s problem. The course is designed in such a way that it trains you in all the important steps you need to go through in to design your project. In the first part of the course, in which all three institutions participate, you will move from problem identification all the way to presenting your project to the client. Subsequent to this, LUC students will pursue a second part of the course, in traditional classroom format, in which they explore the process and challenges of project implementation. Over four weeks, students will be challenged to validate their development plans, design an implementation strategy, budget and finance their programs, and explore how to assess the efficacy of their solutions.
Course objectives
Upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
- Demonstrate a working understanding of the key steps involved in designing and implementing projects within the international development industry.
- Analyze development problems through lenses including the economy; society, culture, and religion; politics, governance, and human rights; local, national, and global institutions; and associated principles, norms, and ethics.
- Research, analyze and identify innovative solutions for key development challenges that take into account the imperatives of cultural freedom, human rights, and individual empowerment alongside feasibility, efficiency, and sustainability.
- Collaborate with peers through online learning and communication technology in designing an international development project intervention, in the process taking into account different viewpoints and experiences from within the classroom, and clients and mentors already established within the profession.
- Arrive at unconventional and innovative solutions by means of an iterative process of proposing ideas and strategies, receiving feedback from diverse sources, reflecting on and incorporating this feedback, and learning from experimentation.
- Effectively communicate the devised solution through industry specific deliverables, and orally present the proposal to outside stakeholders not directly affiliated with the class.
- Formulate an implementation strategy by exploring different ways to validate plans, build implementation teams, and budget and finance projects.
- Critically reflect on the different ways of assessing the efficacy of development solutions.
Timetable
Tuesday: 15:00-16:50
Friday: 13:00-14:50
Mode of instruction
This course will be team taught by the four instructors from LUC, UCD, and UMD. Weekly live class sessions will be convened by all four instructors jointly and all students of the class using Adobe Connect video conferencing. Canvas (from UMD) will be used as the common learning management system for the course. Class sessions will include instructor lectures with skill building exercises, discussions of readings, peer-to-peer feedback on project ideas, and, when possible, discussions with and presentations by clients or outside experts. The last four weeks of the course will be held for LUC students only in a traditional classroom format combining mini-lectures, seminar discussions of readings, and skill building exercises.
This course requires students to work in groups.
Assessment
Class Participation: 7%
Research Brief: 14%
Project Design Exercises: 17,5%
Project Concept Note: 14%
Project Pitch: 17,5%
Project Implementation Exercises: 30%
Blackboard
There will be a Blackboard site available for this course. Students will be enrolled at least one week before the start of classes.
Reading list
All readings will be provided digitally. Weekly reading assignments should be completed for the first meeting of each week.
Registration
This course is open to LUC students and LUC exchange students. Registration is coordinated by the Curriculum Coordinator. Interested non-LUC students should contact "course.administration@luc.leidenuniv.nl":mailto:course.administration@luc.leidenuniv.nl.
Contact
Caroline Archambault and David Ehrhardt:
globalclassroomluc@gmail.com
Remarks
This course will rely on students having reliable access to a personal laptop.