Simulation
Schedule | Teleconference
Schedule
| Rules
Participant Resources | Scenario:
North-South Conference
In IDEELS simulations, participants act as high-level negotiators, activists, consultants, and journalists, working to resolve real problems which can only be solved through cooperation at the international level. In so doing, you will engage in realistic interactions like those which take place between nations and organizations.
Discussions during the simulations are conducted on two levels: deliberations within a team and bilateral and multilateral negotiations between or among teams. Within your team, you will begin by familiarizing yourself with your assigned role profile; you will work together with your teammates to formulate the positions you will present during the Conference negotiations. Once these have been agreed upon, you will communicate your team's mission statement to the other participating groups via Moodle's Message Center. After reading the other groups' mission statements, you will begin communicating with the other groups: asking for clarification, providing additional information, expressing interest in cooperating with groups on specific projects, working out the details of the project you are coordinating, suggesting alternatives to specific aspects of project plans (what should be done, how, by whom, by what date, and in what order?), compromising, building a consensus, and so on.
In addition to asynchronous negotiations via the Message Center,
you will confer with other teams during real-time, online teleconferences and working groups. While
the focus of the Conference is multilateral,
i.e. designing holistic sustainable development projects, you should keep in mind that bilateral
discussions are also important. The goal is to produce and achieve agreement on
collaboratively-written documents (in this case, sustainable development project
plans) that address the problems set forth in the scenario.
As a participant in an IDEELS simulation,
you will be a member of a team representing either a non-governmental organization or a journalistic enterprise. Once you know what your team's role is, you will need to read the detailed profile for that role (linked from the Participant Resource page).
Work with your teammates to articulate
your team's values, goals, priorities and strategies – in other words, your mission – and then learn about the various regions that have requested development projects. Develop a concept for your project that is larger than the specific focus of your NGO (e.g. HIV prevention) and that involves at least three cooperating partners chosen from the other NGOs participating in the simulation. For individual "work packages" (specific parts of the larger project), funding, or specific materials that cannot be provided by these groups, look outside the "frame" of the simulation at possible funding sources (e.g. foundations), NGOs, and corporations and include these in your project plan as well, identifying them as potential external partners.
In the simulation, which is set in the early years of the 21st century, you will engage in the following processes or phases:
Required pre-simulation activities include completing a pre-simulation survey and a learning style inventory. During class time, you will also take part in activities that focus on one or more of the following: team-building, language, cross-cultural communication, cognitive (thinking) skills, and the topic of the simulation. You will be reading about the topic of the simulation, in this case, sub-saharan Africa. To introduce your organization to the others in the simulation, your NGO will publish...:
1) a Mission Statement
2) a Vision Statement
These must be submitted at the beginning of the simulation, before the first teleconference. (Refer to the Simulation Schedule for details.) Remember, the Mission Statement is your organization's calling card, in that it introduces the other participants to your group's values, areas of expertise, experience and activities, and presents your organization as a responsible, reliable, competent NGO – as an organization others will want to work with. The Vision Statement presents a preliminary plan for the project your NGO will coordinate, but does not include all details or name project partners. During the simulation, the Vision Statement is developed in more detail, refined and revised until it has become your NGO's Proposed Project Plan. Refer to the Mission Statement Guide and Project Planning Guide for details.
All teams must submit their Mission Statements before the actual negotiations begin. The exact deadline can be found in the Simulation Schedule and in Moodle. Post the Mission Statement in your team's "Internal Documents" area in Moodle and in the Message Center. E-mail a copy to the simulation moderator at the following address:
Phase 3: Dialogue
As soon as you have published your own team's Mission Statement and Vision Statement, you should read the other teams' Mission Statements and Vision Statements and begin writing to them (using the Message Center) to request clarification of any points in their Statements that are not clear, to suggest areas in which you envision cooperating with them, and to begin to develop holistic, cooperative project plans. The President of the North-South Conference has scheduled a teleconference on the first day of the simulation to open the negotiations. The purpose of this first teleconference (beyond simply getting used to the Moodle environment) is to give each team an opportunity to greet the other participants and to make brief statements expressing their hopes and expectations and summarizing their vision for the project they will coordinate.
Throughout the simulation, teams will communicate asynchronously with each other via the Message Centre and will participate in bilateral and multilateral (synchronous) teleconferences and working sessions. Much of the real work of the negotiations takes place via the Message Centre's asynchronous messaging system; the teleconferences provide opportunities for negotiators to discuss specific points with all participants simultaneously. Each NGO is expected to moderate a working group focusing on the project they are coordinating and to participate in other working groups discussing projects for which they are potential partners. During this phase, detailed project proposals are to be worked out and finalized by the project coordinators for presentation at the final session.
The agreed-upon project plans are to be presented by the respective coordinators at the final plenary session at 4:00 p.m. (CET) on the 4th of December in the "Kleiner Hörsaal" of the "Keksdose".
After the simulation, you will have a variety of opportunities to reflect on the experience and discuss it with the other participants. A debriefing teleconference is scheduled to give you an opportunity to talk about the experience with the other teams. In the two weeks following the simulation, you will also have opportunities to discuss the experience in class with your facilitator/ teacher. Finally, you will write a reflective essay on the experience (your facilitator/teacher has the details).
Simulation
Schedule | Teleconference
Schedule
| Rules
Participant Resources
| Scenario:
North-South Conference
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