Instructor: Pete Schwartz, Pete's Webpage, pschwart@calpoly.edu

Catalog Description:
A broad overview of international development, partnerships for development and appropriate design for sustainability. Besides academic work, students will work in teams to address problems with social and technical solutions. Collaboration with mentors from the university, private sector, and nonprofits will serve to provide diverse background and project mentorship.

The class has four educational facets:
a) Reading and  videos
b) Class Discussions, guest lectures and HW assignments
c) Focus projects and class presentations.

d) Periodic assessments about what we are learning.  There will be a 1-hour final assessment on the last day of class

Focus projects: Students will work in groups of 3-5 on a particular challenge faced by a collaborating community. This project will be the subject of the final group presentation, website, and descriptive video. It is important to understand we may not achieve what we set out to do in the beginning. We remember that there are “experts” in development (Like the World Bank), who have many “failures” in their history. Much of the “failures” could be attributed to not understanding the lives of the people the experts seek to help. I ask that we don’t try to help as much as to learn from the people we collaborate with in our community of interest. You will be graded on the quality of your research and presentations.

Class Presentation / Website: We will have 2 project presentations every class period near the beginning of the class. We will start on Tuesday of Week #2 with group #1 (and #2) and work down the list until we are at the bottom, and then start at the top again until the last day of class. Presentations later in the quarter may be longer, but should also just focus on the most recent progress. These don't count toward your grade, but serve to prepare you for your final presentation. Additionally, your website will be evaluated after midnight the evening of each presentation.

“KickStarter” Video: Produce a video to inspire, teach, and convince the listeners to take action – it shouldn't be about fundraising. This video, posted on YouTube, will be referenced or shown in your final presentation, be linked on your website. [In fall 2020, only one group remembered to do a video and it was great. However, the other projects were also very good, and the requirement was dropped. Hence, if your group excels in some other aspect of your project, a video may not be necessary.]

Final Class Presentation: During exam week, each student group will make a 10-15 minute presentation to the class on their appropriate technology innovation for the focus community. Please bring a dish to share and a place setting for yourself.  Bring a friend if you like. 

Class Preparation: To maximally benefit from the class, please do the readings and come to class ready to talk about them. Readings and other resources are available via the course timeline (link on main class website). I reserve the right to update the assignment as late as 24 hours before class, so if you read ahead, please check the assignment again the evening before each class. Don’t read more than a week ahead.

Participation: My central priority in facilitating classes is to foster community.  My expectation is each of us will show up and be fully engaged in every class.  I understand that you might miss a class. However, if this happens, I expect that you will have notified your group mates and agreed how you will remain connected to the class and your project.

Assessments: We will have a short assessment/group activity near the beginning of each class that covers all previous information including preparation for that class. We will experiment with having these assessments be group assignments with your project group. These are not graded competitively, and the goal is to share thoughts and participate.

Website: Each group is responsible for setting up a website updating it after each presentation. For examples of websites, please see (and put appropriate links to) pages from past classes.

Self-Intervention: We will study how people respond to change by looking at our own response to change. You may do a personal intervention on your own or together with your group. We may do one as a class as well. An intervention should test your ability to adapt to change. It should be something that at first you say, "I can't do that because I must (or can't) ....", and then are able to reformat the statement to, "what would have to change for this to happen?". Graded as part of participation.

Is your group working well together?: Within two days after each presentation, each group member will submit to me an Email stating if everyone in your group is doing their fair share, or if there’s problems, or if you’ve overcome some interesting challenge, or if you would like some help communicating, etc.

Financial costs: Some of the projects may require money. Providing the course material freely online saves students considerable textbook costs. Thus, we request that each student be responsible to fund the group project up to $50. If project costs are greater, or if for any reason funding the project presents a challenge, we do have an IRA (Instructionally-Related Activities) Appropriate Technology and People that can financially support the project if additional support is needed.

You will be graded on your

• class/activity participation,
• your final presentation,
• your website/your video.
• Assessments

I anticipate the majority of the grades will be “A”s. However, your final grade is not an average of these four achievements. Consequently, inadequate achievement in one category will result in a grade lower than an “A”.