Assignment 1 – Find your local challenge

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Time frame

• Identify your challenge: Week 1 (until 04.04.2016)
• Group reflection time: Weeks 2 -3 (05. – 17.04.2016)
• Present your findings: Week 4, 19.04.2016, 16 00 – 17 30 CET

Task description

• Social, economic and environmental problems appear everywhere in our everyday environment. It is our local landscape where we as individuals are directly confronted with these problems – and also able to react.
• At the very beginning of the seminar you are invited to reflect on your local context and its specific challenges. Try to select a topic that really matters to you because you are going to work on it further during the seminar. The challenge identified will also be a criterion for defining the seminar working groups as we intend to (ideally) group students from different countries, different disciplines and similar interests.
• Your first step will be to prepare a graphical representation of your challenge and to upload it on the seminar wiki. On this basis, the groups will be formed and your page will be moved to a team page.
• In the further, your group will analyze the background of the challenge identified. What are important cause-effect relationships? Who are the actors? Who is disadvantaged? What are the wider consequences? You will further reflect on the differences and similarities observed in the different countries.
• Your findings will be visualized with concept maps or other visual tools and presented to the plenary.

Submission format and presentation

• Individual work:graphical representation in JPG format, uploaded to the seminar wiki by simple file upload
• Group work: Concept map and/ or visual thinking output

Tools

• You may use any combination of graphics, text, images for representing your challenge. The end product should be one jpg file for upload on the wiki
• One possibility is to use a powerpoint slide as a basis for representing your challenge. Go to 'save as' and save your PPT slide as a jpg
• For the further analysis of cause effect relationships we recommend concept mapping software. Some practical open source softwar is Cmaps and VUE:
  • Cmap Tools
  • VUE - The Visual Understanding Environment

Evaluation criteria

• Timely submission of required documents
• Depth and logic of analysis (i.e. integrating multiple viewpoints and value schemes)
• Visual quality of representation (readability, clarity, creative expression)
• Quality of oral presentation (i.e. keeping time limits, clarity, expression)