Police-Media Virtual Platform

“Where is necessity, there is will”

Police and media, the two most recognized public service communities are playing conflicting role between each other since the beginning.  Police in one hand is protecting the data for the protection of people and ensuring data security, on the other hand media is revealing them for to the people to ensure their information right. A strategic alliance between these information giants could be the best fit by ensuring their mutual benefit and serving the public.

Intention: why integration

It is known from the long time that police and journalists are working for the same purpose but focusing on two opposite direction. Both the parties use their own sources to collect information or sometimes in some countries they sale information to each other violating their own institutional rule. Both the parties are employing a large amount of people and money in collecting and sourcing such information and both of them are conflicting with each other to get an early hand on this. The only way to eradicate this conflict is by developing trust (Handy, 1995) among them and sharing information among each other (Liu & Chetal, 2005). Therefore as representative of police we have decided to develop a mutual collaborative platform with media industry by developing a virtual information center (Strader, Lin & Shaw, 1998) to have more control and simultaneous supply of information and ensure a win-win for both the parties. So our mission is to develop 

The Negotiated terms: what is the plan 

When building a virtual collaborative platform for Police and Media, it is obvious that the main issue you might face is about the direction of the project. Which goals the project is intended to serve? Which direction shall we go towards? Which rules should we define in order to shape the concept? We strongly focused on these issues and questions when negotiating virtually with the Media team.

We eventually came to the conclusion that considering the amount of requirements that each part had, but also considering the complexity of the project itself, we needed to develop a comprehensive list of rules that would ensure the functioning of the platform, and fix the possibilities and duties for both Police and Media.

After several weeks of negotiation online, each part brought a significant amount of requirements that he wanted to insert in the rules list and that would potentially better serve its own interests: there was 15 demands from police and 10 demands from Media. Through an intense and complicated bargaining process, we combine, amend and gather all these demands in order to come up with a list of 19 negotiated terms: a summary of the rules that are critical to the efficiency of the project and that would be considered as the backbone of the virtual platform.

Even though it is a very formal to state in our blog this exhaustive and detailed list, we believe that it is essential to go through and explain these majors points in order to get a precise understanding of the Police and Media collaborative platform. We consider the following points as the most important details of the platform:

Point 1: The cost Sharing System

During the installation period (creation of the server and technical set up), Police will take in charge 70% of the costs, while Media will only pay 30% of these costs. However, we believe that the Police costs will be reduced by the government rebates and advantages, and will decrease real cost from 70% to 45%. During the operation period, costs will be equally split between the two parts (50%-50%).

Point 2: The 10 years Track record

For each case, Police wants to make sure the reporters or the Media employees that will be involved are clean and safe. For that matter, any Media person will have to provide a 10 years tax file records and a statement of his criminal background, in order to assess whether the person has a link with Mafia or criminal organization.

Point 3: Use of Media source

Police will have the right to use any Media source at any moment during the operations.

Point 4: Police Information update

Since it is very important to achieve a high level of efficiency in this project, we agreed on the fact that Police will have to update information immediately after reception.

Point 5: Permission Layer and Permission Rapidity

Police has a strong position in this project. It supervises the permission levels and decides whether or not Media can cover a case. Media should get the permission of Police before covering any news from High Layers. However, Police must guarantee a fast decision for the permission.

Point 6: Single case Access permission

Since every case is different, permission for the Media coverage is only valid for one single case. Each new case will require a new permission.

Point 7: Server Location

For safety reasons, we decided that the Information center Server will be host in the Police headquarter. The back-up server will be located in the Media association office.

Point 8: Server maintenance

Each part will take in charge the cost of maintenance for its own system. Police will finance the Information System server maintenance, while Media will take in charge the Back-up system costs.

Point 9: Importance of the Information level

As we previously said, Police has a leading power in this project. We designed a 5 levels system to assess the importance of each case, and Police will decide the importance of each case, according to its information and its understanding of the case.

Point 10: Low Levels coverage

Any case that is considered as a « Low level case » will be freely covered by Media. With this rule, we aim at providing strong coverage efficiency for cases that are less risky.

Point 11: Information access and modification

Both Police and Media have the right to access and input data on the system, but only Police can modify information and data. However, for data modification, Police should have one level up verification and provide reasonable reason to Media.

Point 12: the « National Security » rule

Police has the right to reject or to block the coverage of any case at any level under one special condition: a National security matter. If the rejection is not a national security matter, Media will have the right to publish the news.

Point 13: Responsibility of media

If Media provides any wrong data or information, Media will be fully responsible for the mistake.

Point 14: Media data Security Responsibility

Media will be responsible for the security of data they provide.

Point 15: Control of Information access

Police will be informed every time someone is accessing the data. This information will be sent to the Responsible officer at police department.

Point 16: Use of Instant Messenger

We created an Instant Messenger system that will be aimed at improving the efficiency of the Police/Media collaboration. Each media person will install this IM application on his mobile phone and must not switch off the IM without the permission of the Police Department. The idea is to make Media reporters accessible anytime and to enhance the exchange of information.

Point 17: Future issues

There will be a different unit to share open information. Where media can share information about any probable future issues. If Police finds out that the media person had the information of a future incident beforehand but did not share it on the special platform, he will be accused for that and fully responsible.

Point 18: Referral to supervisor

Police will assign a supervisor to each Media team, and Media will have to refer to him about any issue or problem.

Point 19: Case- based team

We know that each case is different. For that reason, we decided that teams will be changed and designed according to the specificity of each case, its location and its level of importance.

Also, we discussed a lot another rule proposed by Police and that Media rejected. This rule was asking that « a reporter should not leave a job in the middle of a case ». For practical reasons, Media asked us to remove this rule: since the mobility of journalists and reporters is important, it is difficult for them to guarantee such a thing. However we reached the agreement that every time a reporter would leave his job in the middle of a case, Media association should deal with the handover in advance and make sure that the reporter will not share any information about this case with the public. If there is any leak, reporter will be accused for that.

This list of rules has shaped our project but above all, our collaborative experience. Reaching agreements on each requirement, accepting to remove some demands, and narrow our requirements is a quite tricky process. In the last part of our blog, we will tackle the conflicts that we faced during this collaboration, and also the Knowledge management that we tried to implement in our project.

Process: how to perform

Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management can enable effective design and emergence of virtual organizations, virtual teams and virtual communities (Malhotra, 2000). We know that A process to enable people to develop a set of practices to create, capture, share & use knowledge to advance organizational goals and here we are focused on developing explicit organizational knowledge. We have differentiated our knowledge management policy in three segments:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø  <!--[endif]-->Level of usage

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø  <!--[endif]-->External and open source usage

<!--[if !supportLists]-->Ø  <!--[endif]-->Archiving

Level of usage

Here the information is organized in five levels to ensure the usage and control. Moving to each level up in the ladder will increase the control over the information and reduce the restriction on media. In the green level the information is open to share without any permission. Light green level requires permission from one step senior of the reporting journalist. Yellow level information is published with mutual decision of the journalist and respective police officer based on importance and intensity of the information against the need for publication. Orange level is the publishable top priority information what is decided by both media and police head together. The red level of information is the top priority that cannot be revealed because national security issue or other topmost important issue for solving case.

External and open source usage:

This section is open for open information sharing and collecting. This section also has three parts. In the first past, there is an open portal for sharing information about probable future cases what should come into the consideration. Second section is for sharing information from the mass people and anyone can provide any information keeping their identity secret. Third portal is the link of all news media where people can log in and get the updated news.

Information archiving:

Last part of the knowledge management is focused on proper storage of the information.  The traditional record keeping should be replaced with digitalization and being a click away to retrieve it. As mentioned earlier there will be a main server in police headquarter to capture all the information entering into the system and that will be backed up by another server from media association office. It is important for knowledge management because one of the most important parts of knowledge management is to store and control the secure use of information.

Legal Obligation

While implementing the data center we have to consider the relative international law and law of land and make sure that such laws are not violated. There is no international data protection law implied but different country has developed their own law for self-protection, for example:  Britain has their Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) to ensure the control over personal data. On the other hand, media in the most of the country follow the acts of human rights where Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines the media rights in article 15-19.

Virtual Team Performance

How police and media can work together in the virtual team is been discussed and analyzed in our practical orientation with the virtual team and we have developed three aspects for such virtual team performance:

<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team development

<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team creativity

<!--[if !supportLists]-->v <!--[endif]-->Team interaction

Team development

Team development process can be done based on two categories; task related and socio-emotional (Siebdrat, Hoegl & Ernst, 2009) and we are focused on the task related process of team development is our project. Different police officer and journalists from different media company will work is different cases simultaneously. They will develop an intra and intra team culture in the virtual world. For example: If there is five police officer is working in three different cases and six journalists from three media company is covering that news they can formulate a cross teaming culture and such develop better relationship among each other.

Team creativity

Earlier a police officer or more from the similar area tried to solve a case but now the scenario will be different. Now they shall have a bigger team with the support from media and those media people are coving diversified stories and have different additional knowledge.

Those knowledge sharing might not increase creativity of a single person but it will develop creativity and performance outcome of the team as a whole with the support of better and intense communication (Leenders, Engelen & Kratzer, 2003). Study says that when people works from different location together that increases the creativity. Moreover, working with diversified people will increase their creativity as well and having insights from previous different cases from media will help us as police to enhance our vision to solve our case.

Team interaction

Information technology has developed substantively over the last two decades and development growth is remarkable in last few years with more convenient access of mobile communication devices. Writing long email is now replacing with live voice and video chat with the advancement of 4^th generation network module. In the bus, train or even on the streets people are moving with 24/7 accessible and traceable communicating devices. For our virtual platform, we also want to develop an intranet among the police stations and media offices for communication. Moreover, we want to develop a separate mobile application for the registered police officers and media staffs to track and communicate with the team members at any time and formulate a group chat among each other.

Conflicts and collaboration

During the process of negotiate with media, we have some task conflicts. From the research of Carsten K. W. De Dreu and Laurie R. Weingart, it showed that examples of task conflict are conflicts about the distribution of resources, procedures and policies, and judgments and interpretation of facts. And every community will focus on their own parts and interests, and want other communities to compromise. Precisely because of this, we have the different views about our common projects. So in order to solve these conflicts, we choose different negotiation styles in different steps to increase our collaboration. In the first step, when we discussed this project, our team-police gave 15 points to support and protect our own interests, and when media saw that they agreed with our these points. In this step, our team competed with media and wined this step, and they showed compromise. But in second step, media had different points and wanted to modify our points, and they gave 10 points to support their own interests. So in third step, we should discuss these 25 points and reach the consensus about our project. During the process of discussing our different points, we chose to collaborate our points. Firstly, we found our common interests, and then we discussed and modified our different points. Finally, we chose 19 points as our common points about this virtual platform to support police and media’s interests. So solving the conflicts should based on different steps.

Virtual organizing

By the research, we can know that virtual organizing has three vectors (customer interaction, asset configuration and knowledge leverage) and three stages. About our team virtual project, it just includes two vectors, so I will focus to introduce these two vectors. Concerning customer interaction, our virtual platform not just bring service to police and media, it also provide information to public. Public is the customer of this platform and have right to know, check and upload the newest information. By this platform, it could provide remote experience of products and services to public, because public could check the information that they want to know and upload the newest information. When the police, media and public upload the information in this platform, they could learn the different thinking models and enhance their creativity, which is their stage three. Concerning knowledge leverage, police and media have different knowledge backgrounds, and when they share their information, which means the knowledge integration and create the new values to these two communities. For the stage one, this platform is the new product and could bring many new information to these two communities, and stage two, this platform could increase the police’s working efficiency and decrease their working time and save costs, which could bring economic values to police, and stage three, it is the information integration, and police and media will increase their own creativity by their discussion and sharing information.

Benefits of all stakeholders

Common benefits

Why the police and media want to build this platform? - Because it could bring several benefits to them. For this platform, it just focuses how to share the information, so the benefits also focus the information. Firstly, it could share the newest and previous information with each other. This platform is the center of information, police and media could upload all information in it. For example, when the country happened a murder case and killed a person, police and media will go to collect the information, but they focus on different points like police would collect some information about how to solve this case，and media would collect the information about the thoughts and feedbacks about the person’s neighbors, friends and families. So when the police and media upload the information to the platform, police could use these feedbacks from the neighbors and know some people have possible to do murder. Secondly, they could check the information anytime. Policemen and journalists could download the related apps about this platform, and when they want to check the information that they want to know, they could check it by their smartphone in anytime and any places. Thirdly, they could grasp the latest data. All the information will upload in the platform, which means police and media could grasp them include the latest information.

Benefits of government

Government is the dominant force in our country and our society, so it has rights to obtain all information and know the process of police and media. The first benefit is control the process of case. For example, when the country happened a new robbery case, government could check the detailed information about this case and know the process of solving this case by police, and when the police met a problem like lack of resources, government could bring some supports to police as soon as possible, and help the police. Secondly, government knows how to guide the action. Government is the central of power and authority, so when the country happened a new case, government always should play the important role in it like guiding the police and giving some suggestions to them.

Benefits of public

All communities should service the public and meet their demands, so public also have rights to use this platform. When they use this platform, they could check the basic information that they want to know like they want to know the news about murder case, they could search the key words in this platform and check all the basic information about the murder case. Then this platform ensures the public’s right to know the truth. In China, it has a law regulation that public has the right to know all the information. So this platform could ensure the public right and make them feel respected by the government, police and media. And this platform could make police and media receive the good reputation from public and obtain the public’s support. 

Benefits of police (compare with real platform)

Our team’s role is police, so we should focus the benefits that police could obtain from this virtual platform. And these benefits could not obtain from the real platform. Firstly, it is the quickly information sharing platform. Compared with real platform, virtual platform could quickly upload the newest information in this platform and quickly sharing this information. Secondly, media and police could mutual assistant with each other. By this platform, police and media will upload their information with the new case, which means police could use some useful information from media, and media could know which type of information will helpful to police. So it builds a mutual assistant and makes a good relationship with each other. Thirdly, it could save the police’s cost. Building this platform, police and media will share these costs about build this platform, so it could save the police’s cost compared with just the police build this platform. Fourthly, it could build the harmonious relation with public. Public will check the information that they want to know in this platform, and check some information uploaded by police. And the public could know the police’s detailed work and know the police spare no effort to solve the case. When public know these information, they will trust police and believe they service the public, and then public will support the police’s work. Fifthly, it could increase the cases-solving rate. From this platform, police collects all the useful information to solve the case and it could save their time and energy, and then improve their work efficiency. Sixthly, it could improve the policemen’s creativity. During the process of sharing information, police could know the journalists’ working style and thinking models. And when they discuss the information with media, they will share their own thoughts and learn something from others. Seventhly, it could improve police’s time management. Collecting all information by this platform, policemen could save their time and energy, which means they have more time and energy to arrange their other work and other tasks. And it will improve their ability to manage their own time.

Conclusion

Police forces across the world are hoping to develop a better relationship with media and police chief of NYPD has also tried to say the same thing in his interview with ABC news. We just need a proper platform to come together to find and share our ideas and common interests. A virtual data center is not only medium of information sharing or information protection module, rather it is a medium of collaboration and knowledge sharing using the beauty of technological advancement and above all it is the platform to provide best and most efficient service to mass level people.

References:

Liu, P., and Chetal, A., “Trust-based secure information sharing between federal government agencies”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Volume 56, Issue 3, pages 283–298, February 2005.

Strader, T. J., Lin, F. R., and Shaw, M. J., “Information infrastructure for electronic virtual organization management”, Decision Support Systems, Volume 23, Issue 1, Pages 75–94, May 1998.

Malhotra, Y., “Knowledge management and virtual organizations”, Idea Group Publishing, 2000.

Siebdrat, F., Hoegl and M., Ernst, H., “How to manage virtual teams”, MITSloan Manahement Review, Volume 50, Number 4, Summer 2009

Handy, C., “Trust and the virtual organization”, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1995

Leenders, R. A. J., Engelen, J. M. L., and Kratzer, J, “Virtuality, communication, and new product team creativity: a social network perspective”, Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, Volume 20, Issues 1–2, Pages 69–92, June 2003

Venkatraman, N. and Henderson, J. C.,  “Real strategies for virtual organizing”, 1998

Carsten K. W. D. and Laurie R. W., “Task Versus Relationship Conflict, Team Performance, and Team Member Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis”, 2003

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Act_1984#History

http://www.investigative-journalism-africa.info/?page_id=173

Ecreativity: Shape Your Future

"Creativity is not innovation, innovation is form of creativity. It is more like a thinking process."

"Language is not a formal learning, it is more adaptation process."

"A proper structure can make a mix to cultivate thinking and adaptive capabilities."

We are the consultant company “The Cassiopeian” have been appointed by the SDS Department (Student Development Services) of City University of Hong Kong to design a English language course teach students English as a second language, simultaneously help them to be creative as most of the teachers in Hong Kong do not have the creativity training (Cheng, 2004).

At the very beginning, we propose the university to sign a MoU with British council to have collaboration for the win-win of both the parties. Here university will achieve their desired objective and British Council will have students from the university and also generate adequate profit. At the same time, such collaboration will help CityU to enhance their international exposure and British Council to have better access in Hong Kong market.

Course Details planning

It will be a one year course for six credits. There will be three levels of the course: beginner level what will shape molecule to a skeleton of learning, advanced level that will lead the skeleton to a fleshed body and expert level will complete the learner in formal attire, being ready with language proficiency and also with creativity. Beginner and advanced level will be for three months and expert level will be for six months itself. We can assume that as a university student in Hong Kong, students already know the basics of English language, therefore we need to focus on the proficiency of utilization and at the same time nurture their creativity.

As we know that the learning a language has four parts: reading, writing, listening and speaking; we will focus on the reading and listening part in the beginner level and speaking and writing in the advanced level. In the expert level, we will mostly focus on the effective utilization of their learning.

Beginner level

Our objective in the beginner level is to introduce the students with structural orientation of English language of reading and listening form and develop their own creativity and therefore within the structure assimilate their molecules to shape a skeleton. Our intension is to develop the listening and reading skill in the beginning level to make them more accustomed with the language. To improve their listening, we prefer to engage them in listening in different areas of colloquial English speaking. For example: Russian English, Chinese English, Indian English, British English, American English, good English and bad English. Therefore, they can listen carefully and engage their brain for picking up the words and being active learner. Such way they will be able to learn English spontaneously and at the same time for their brain being active and learning different forms together, they will be creative. For the reading we suggest them to read English comics and play English games. As these people are more love to read comics of their own language and play games but offering them in reading comics in class or playing games, will enhance their reading of English and also grab their interest of reading and also the game instructions will help their reading and the mind games will help them to be creative. We will also show them foreign movies and also English movies with English subtitles to help them to grab the language.

Advanced level

 Objective of the advanced level is to flourish the developed skeleton of knowledge of creativity and English language to a complete body format with their thinking formation comprising speaking and writing skills. Students will engage in different role playing in the classroom based on imagining character. Speaking will focus on their dialogue and discussion on their imaginary role or continuous dialogue or story. For example: a student will be given an umbrella and ask him to imagine and define that in a different way or the instructor will start a story and ask the students to continue the story or the instructor may give a topic to the student and student will have to continue the describing the topic without mentioning the title of the topic. Thus it will help both speaker and listener to increase their language skill at the same time creativity with their divergent thinking (Plucker and Runco, 1999). The similar exercise will also be used for writing practice, whereas the topic might be writing a play with different roles or letter or application based on the role the student is playing, for example: a letter from boyfriend to girlfriend or father to a son or termination letter by the boss to employee or application to government.

We also prefer to incorporate the use of advanced technology like e-chat in this part. As most of students are now using smartphone and have QQ, Facebook, whazzup access there, we might form a group there and start different discussion topic like recent trends or gossips or spicy story in English and give different stimulus time to time to diversify their discussion to a different level and allow them to engage in more thinking process to make changes in the inclination and sort the implications of the gossips and so help them to think critically and creatively.

Expert level

Objective of the expert level is to formulate the creative execution and furnish the developed body of language and creativity with an formal level attire to make them ready to explore in the market. In this level, the students will be sent to different countries, 3 months for cultural adaptation training supported with English language and they will be sent to British council affiliated countries and under their supervision. The next 2 months they will have to work for British council what will help them to collaborate with different people and also from different countries. Such their English language will reach to the excellent level. Last month they will also stay at that country but they will have to work in an international project with virtual team. Thus they will have to be in a foreign country at least for six months what will develop their creativity and intellectual capacity (Maddux & Galinsky, 2006).

Their final evaluation of English proficiency and creativity development will be judged by their synergy of divergent and convergent thinking process (Treffinger, Isaksen and Droval, 1994) in their virtual team project. All the team members in the project will be the member of British council in different countries like our students. Each group will select a distinct industry and find the problems of that industry based on their own country and cultural perspective and finally they will go for a rule making process for the industrial development worldwide. Their individual input to the thinking process and policy development will judge their creativity and their presentation, writing the report and discussion in Q/A session will evaluate their English proficiency.

Stakeholders: Concerns and Collaborations

We have considered that there are eight different stakeholders actively or submissively will be involved in this program playing the role of inhibitor, facilitator and end user. They are the teachers- who will physically teach in the class, students, guardians- who will pay for their children, university governing body- who will get the bonanza, we-the consultant firm, SDS department of the university- who will lead the program, British council-who will get monetary and market expansion benefit but provide with resources and university grand commission- who will work as representative of government.

The program will be an integrated win-win for all the stakeholders considering the point of view of their individual perspectives and relative benefit analysis.

Teachers will have a more structured composition of curriculum to teach the class, however they need to be engaged in a more thinking process than the others what will also help them to think creatively themselves and motivate them for their self-interest and at the same time their knowledge distinction and differentiation in teaching such a challenging course will help them to develop career or move to other universities in future.

For the students, although it will be a challenging course to continue as most of the teaching forms are traditional, not creative and they are used to with such a structure; it will be difficult for the students to come out of the structure but at the same time it utilization of technology and opportunity to study and work abroad will draw their interest.

Guardians will be highly concerned as they are the one, who is paying the money for the course but they will also find the relative benefit over the cost, considering the foreign learning and working exposure of their children what can be a trademark for the children’s career orientation.

University governing body might find this irrational and expensive course to run, comparing with the other courses but they will also notice their opportunity of increasing exposure in the global marketplace. However, we think University might try to apply for a subsidy from the UGC under ministry of education for creating such a valuable course for the creative development of the future national leaders and upon proper diagnosis of our detail process and prospective future outcome, UGC will also consider it as beneficial for them.

As mentioned in the beginning, for SDS and British council, it is already a win-win, therefore they will be more focused on the implementation policy and service excellence during the continuation of the program.

As the consultant, our concern will be aligned with both SDS and British council for the successful implementation of the program and based on its success; we will be able to apply this policy to the other educational institutes.

Curricular Evaluate on Teaching Creativity

“Creativity is a skill for all, an ability that everyone can develop, and therefore that can be inhibited”.  We based our curricular innovation on this very insightful statement. The key question of our English language program is How to bring students to use their existing skills and knowledge in order to enhance the English learning process, and how to set up an appropriate environment (the “enablers” factors) that would foster creativity and innovation in the learning process. We design a program that use a framework known by everyone (Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking), but propose to our student an innovative way to practice each step of the learning process. We want the student to transfer his existing knowledge and interests into the learning experience, in order to let him think differently. Listening to different English accents, playing games, reading comics in class instead of formal readings: we will bring to the classroom experience any element that the student is more comfortable with, in order to encourage him to be active, and above all, to dare.

We also think that the use of Technology within the classroom could be one of the most powerful “enabler” factors for an innovative English program. When you look at a classroom in Hong Kong, you can see the extent to which students are familiar with new technologies, and how much they interact with their electronic devices. Some teachers say that it is difficult to align technologies to their curricular, but we consider that it is a very important tool to catch the declining in-class attention of students, and to get them involved in the process. Teaching creativity also means bringing innovation in the usual opposition between Leisure and School work. Many studies have shown that technology for educational purpose has a positive impact on student’s self-confidence and implication. We want to teach creativity through a method that brings student’s “everyday reality into their educational process” (Wastiau et Al., 2009).

Curricular Evaluate on Assessing Creativity:

The assessment method is also a key factor in the implementation of an innovative English learning program. “If exam papers are asking for notional performances, teaching and learning will tend to focus on propositional knowledge”: this clearly means that a change in the teaching method implies a change in the assessment process. In our program, we want to avoid the “performance goal structure” that encourages to reduce mistakes, to run for the highest grades and that value competition among students. As mentioned in the Robinson Report table, our vision of the right assessment would be defined as “Formative”: we put a stress on the progress of each student, considering that our teaching is tailored for each student specificity.  The goal-oriented attitude will be rewarded, in focusing more on how much effort, ideas, and innovation the student put in the learning process, than on the final result.

We propose many different forms of assessment, from unusual assignments (performing role plays) to open-ended questions that would value creativity and not only formal answers. For instance, we think that a conversation between 2 students via an online forum is as valuable as a short essay in a written exam. Besides, when it comes to creativity, it is difficult to assess it during a final exam, since it is sometimes stressful and can damage creative behaviors among students. So we propose in our program a continuous assessment during our 3 phases (Beginner, Advanced and Expert) that would allow student to focus on the content without being inhibited by the result. Hence, the ultimate assessment of the student’s creativity will be judged based on his performance in the last month’s project.

Individual Behavior and Team Dynamics

The beauty of “The Cassiopeian” consulting firm is our strength and weakness, both are originated from the same foundation that is diversity. All of our conflicting and creative ideas, clash and co-operation generated during this course curriculum development because of our individual and cultural diversity (Hofstede, 1989).

Factors Inhibited

Concerning the different background, our team members come from different countries with three different cultural dimensions, therefore with different perspectives, thinking process and working procedure. According to the cultural dimensions of Hofstede, mass difference in IDV, UAI and LTO leaded us to contrasting ideologies, however resolved with the implication of similar PDI. For example: Arif, who is a boy come from Bangladesh and have various working experience, so he could think so many different ideas about the project, and Boris, who is a boy come from France, he like sharing his idea, and if he do not like the idea, he will persist his own idea. So when they have the different idea about the same project, they need to persuade each other, yet not revealed in the blog that generated during the storming stage (Shaw, 1998). Even the strong extent of creative idea of our team members sometimes hindered others mind and team creativity (Kirton, 1989). Technology was the medium of our group sharing and group thinking as we mostly used facebook as our virtual meeting place to share the ideas, however expertise in certain technology and access to those technologies from different location was not plausible what actually constrained our state of creativity development. For example: the Chinese Lunar New Year was an optimum time for us to work, however restriction of facebook, hampered our share of ideas on time, therefore inhibited us to a small extent.

Factors Facilitated

Again one of the most important factors worked between us was the diversification of knowledge and culture. Our previous work and cultural experience helped us to make prudent decisions about course curriculum development. We could think from within and out of the conventional English language course syllabus and helped each other to formulate our decision matrix combining the alternatives and considering the relative issues. Concerning the project, our team members hold common or overlapping cognitive representations of task requirement, goals and procedures and role responsibilities (Thompson and Fine, 1999) and sense of requirement. Our continuous communication process, except the technological constrains for a time being, was very much efficient to share any idea instantly for the feedback of the team (Catmull, 2008) and there we tried the lessons ourselves, specially the lessons for beginner and advanced level, we have tested ourselves. We have made a pool of concepts to develop the curriculum and from the pool of ideas, we formed the consensus. Above all, we all have recognized that the objective is not our individual goal, rather it is the group outcome and that helped us to continue in the groupthink process and develop our product pitch.

Conclusion

Creativity does not mean innovation; innovation is a form of output from creativity. It is nothing but thinking in a new way or beholding the old staff in a new way. The approaches we have designed here, you might find many of their existence in different learning modules; however we have combined them together and added new ingredients to formulate a structured shape and generate duple benefit. We have tried to keep it as interesting as possible, because once a scholar said that ‘when a novel becomes textbook, it is no more interesting to read’. We believe that there is no charisma or special spell to make the students creative or teach a second language, if they do not feel self-interest; therefore our approach was to make the course as interesting as possible and allow the students to enjoy the motion of learning with joy.

 “There is no secret ingredients, it is just you” - (Kung Fu Panda)

References:

Catmull, E. (September 2008), How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity, Harvard Business Review.

Cheng, V. M. Y. (August 2004), Developing Physics Learning Activities for Fostering Student Creativity in Hong Kong Context. Asia-Pacific Forum of Scientific Learning and Teaching- Volume 5, Issue-2.

Hofstede, G. (December 1989), Organizing for cultural diversity, European Management Journal, Volume 7, Issue 4, Pages 390-397.

Kirton,M.(1989).Adaptors and Innovators: Styles of creativity and problem-solving. New York: Roureledge.

Maddux, W. W. & Galinsky, A. D. (2006), Cultural Barriers and Mental Borders: Multicultural Experience Facilitates Creative Thinking and Problem Solving. International Association for Conflict Management (IACM) Meetings Paper.

Plucker, J. A. & Runco, M. A. Enhancement of Creativity (1999). In Runco M. A. (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Creativity-vol 1, Academic Press, pp 669-675.

Shah, J. B. (October 1998), The Effects of Diversity on Small Work Group Processes and Performance, Human Relations, vol. 51.

Treffinger, D. J., Isaksen, S. G. & Droval, K. B. (1994), Creative Problem Solving: An Overview. In Runco M. A. (Ed.), Problem Finding, Problem Solving and Creativity, Ablex Publishing Corporation, pp (223-236).

Thompson, L. and Fine, G. (1999). Socically-shared cognition, affect,& behavior : A review and integration. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 278- 302

A Symbol of Collaboration Forever...

If you ask someone, "what is collaboration?" the simplest answer might be "working together". Three countries, one objective, one destiny, that is collaboration. We have collaborated France, China and Bangladesh together in Hong Kong for a same purpose for a same goal.

 

 

From the school to the office, from the friendship to the family, in the group of animals to the school of fishes, from the science to the arts, everywhere we can see the formation of group, having the sense of belongingness and working together to achieve the desired goal.

The oldest example of collaboration might be a galaxy or comet, since the creation of the universe and before the existence of man or any other form of life; these stars continue to rotate together on their own course. Cassiopeia constellation is one of the most famous and beautiful among them, named by the name of queen Cassiopeia of Aethiopia according to the Greek mythology.

 

 

Since the beginning of the human civilization, these stars are showing the way to the sailors with their presence in the northern sky. Cassiopeia teaching us, how to work in group and stay in the proper course like stars. It is teaching us, how to lead people and guide them, show them the way from the top of them what is most important in collaborating any kind of team or organization. Not only that, the shape of Cassiopeia, “W” is the symbol of wonder that guides people to seek knowledge and make a group better from within. As a team, how can we shine together and become the benchmark within the whole organization, is visible in Cassiopeia, as there are other bright starts as well in the sky but we can notice only Cassiopeia, because of its group formation.

 

If we consider our class is our universe for the time being and each classmate is a star and their groups are different constellation, galaxy or milk ways. Three members from the three different parts of the world with three different nationality, culture, customs and beliefs; we have formed together the bond of collaboration. We are ready to lead our group and also our class to the desired destination.

It is not only about a name or logo. It is something more than that, something more beautiful, more about teamwork, relationship and commitment. It is about Cassiopeia and we three are the most shining one as the member of beautiful Cassiopeia. We are THE CASSIOPEIAN...