IDEELS: Checklist: Are You Ready?

IDEELS

North-South Conference: Building Partnerships for Sustainable Development

Simulation Schedule | Teleconference Schedule | Rules
Participant Resources | Scenario: North-South Conference

Checklist: Are You Ready?

Participating in a large-scale telematic simulation should be a challenging experience. Writing about the university learning experience in general, Stella Cottrell says, "...You should feel stretched. You should feel that occasionally the ground is moving beneath your feet. Confusion and uncertainty are characteristics of moving from 'novice' to more expert or sophisticated levels of thinking. If you know this, then you should be able to cope with that uncertainty without feeling something is wrong."

Source: Cottrell, Stella. Skills for Success (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 88.

To help you safely navigate the journey ahead, here is a list of things you and your team need to do before the simulation starts.

Have you...

...completed the Learning Style Inventory and the Pre-Simulation Survey?
...sent the simulation moderator a plain text file containing a list (firstname, lastname, email, etc.– one person per line) of your group's members? Note: Ask your teacher / facilitator for exact details of information to include.
...sent your group's NGO focus preference list to the simulation moderator?
...created a pseudonym and identity for yourself? Suggestion: try this fake name generator!
...Provided the simulation moderator with a list matching real names with pseudonyms?
...read the document "How IDEELS Simulations Work"?
...practiced working with Moodle (particularly Chats/Conferences)?
...read the Introduction to simulations (How IDEELS Simulations Work)?
...read your team's role profile (NGO or Journalists)?
...read the document "Scenario Introduction: Africa"?
...read the Project Region descriptions to decide where the project you coordinate will be based?
...read the country profiles for the regions you are interested in working in?
...attended the Africa Forum Panel Discussion (6 p.m., November 4th, in GW2, B 2900)?
...practiced using the following CoRT tools: PMI, CAF, C&S, and OPV?
...learned how to use the SWOT diagram as a tool to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of your own NGO, potential partner organizations, and your sustainable development proposal?
...learned how to use the four-quadrant prioritizing grid to rank your own and your team's tasks to make certain the important-and-urgent and important-but-not-urgent ones (quadrants 1 & 2) get accomplished?
...decided how to organize your team and share the workload to make sure important tasks get done?
...decided how to organize communications within your team to keep everyone abreast of developments, even if they miss a meeting or a class session?
...devised a plan to ensure that communications from other groups are read and responded to promptly?
...familiarized yourself with some of the real NGOs working in your NGO's specialization, studied their mission statements, read about projects they have been involved in?
...considered how the journalists can help you publicize your NGO and your vision and achieve your goals? For journalists: Have you considered how to develop reliable sources (contacts) within the various NGOs?

If you can answer these questions in the affirmative (yes!), then you should be well-prepared to begin the simulation. Very soon after it starts, you will need to be able to answer these two questions in the affirmative as well:

Have you developed your team's strategy, written your Mission Statement and published it in the Message Center (Moodle), clearly identified as your team's Mission Statement?
Have you written your team's Vision Statement and published it in the Message Center (Moodle), clearly identified as such, so all the other teams can read it?

Additional Suggestions:

To learn about the "do's and don'ts" governing conduct in the simulation, read the document "Rules and Procedures."

To develop a clearer sense of some of the things we hope you will learn from participating in the simulation, you might want to read through the Shared Learning Objectives and talk about specific learning objectives with your team.

To gain a fuller understanding of what constitutes good teamwork and how you can contribute to your team's efforts, read about Team Roles, about Leadership Styles, and about what contributes to successful teamwork and what detracts from it; think about the role(s) you can play to support your team and help it achieve its goals.

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