Exercise 2: Human Progress: People
Learning Outcomes
After completing this exercise, students will be able to:
- develop an effective infographic to communicate ideas
- describe the impact of disruptive-leadership improvements in driving human progress.
Overview
At the start of the course, your instructor will assign you to lead one of the human-progress discussions in Units 1 – 4. Be sure to contact your instructor as soon as possible if you do not know your assignment or need to make alternate arrangements.
Discussion Leaders
If you are assigned to be a discussion leader for this topic:
- Choose a historical leader who interests you and exhibits all of these four criteria:
- Demonstrated Creative Disruption: The leader put into place something really new to his or her world, inspiring needed improvements and driving change to grow.
- Demonstrated Complex Problem-Solving: The leader showed systems thinking by pulling together resolutions to multiple, tough problems—either by her- or himself or by pulling in others.
- Demonstrated Transformative Leadership: The leader leveraged a situational leadership condition and showed use of the 5-E leadership model.
- Advanced the Progress of Civilization: The leader made his or her “world” and people a better place as a result of his or her actions.
- Research and develop a timeline showing the leader’s impact on history prior, during, and after their work. To communicate the results, put your timeline into an infographic format, using any software you desire, and load as a PDF.
- Summarize 3 – 5 key disruptions that occurred during this timeline. If known, identify the leader(s) of each disruption and the effects of these disruptions on society, both anticipated and unanticipated (e.g., led to war, unemployment, new industries, new career fields, wealth, etc.).
- Post your infographic and a short summary (1 – 3 pages including the key disruptions) to the Exercise 2: Human Progress: People discussion forum by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 3 of Unit 2.
- Also submit your completed infographic via Submissions in the left-hand menu by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 7 of Unit 2.
Infographic Tips
- An infographic is a visual representation of your story. For a timeline, it will likely have a chronological look, but there may be many paths.
- Use your creativity. Adobe Suite (especially Illustrator), PowerPoint, and even Excel could be used for your timeline. Upload your final version as a PDF file.
- Some Key Tips
- Identify the main concepts, actors, and nonhuman actors in a story.
- Develop visualizations that graphically depict the main concepts and actors based on authentic representations consistent with the time and place of the story.
- Graphically depict the human-progress area over time, and link parallel paths where needed.
- Design an infographic that is both visually and logically cohesive.
- Use as few words as needed to communicate the story.
Discussion Participants
If you are assigned to be a discussion participant for this topic:
- Read each submission in the Human Progress: People discussion forum.
- Provide 4 – 7 bullet-point comments or critical thinking questions on this entire category of human progress, based on your readings and thoughts from all the submissions.
- Respond to at least one post in the forum using an actual critical-thinking tool or technique (e.g., “Could you share an illustration of what you mean?”, “How does that connect to the issue?”, “Is there another way to look at this question?”, etc.).
- Make your final posts by 11:59 p.m. U.S. EST/EDT on Day 7 of Unit 2.
Grading
Exercise 2 will be graded according to the criteria specified in the Human Progress Infographic and Discussion grading rubric, which can be found in Grades on the course menu. For details on grading, refer to the Syllabus.
Infographic Tips
- An infographic is a visual representation of your story. For a timeline, it will likely have a chronological look, but there may be many paths.
- Use your creativity. Adobe Suite (especially Illustrator), PowerPoint, and even Excel could be used for your timeline. Upload your final version as a PDF file.
- Some Key Tips
- Identify the main concepts, actors, and nonhuman actors in a story.
- Develop visualizations that graphically depict the main concepts and actors based on authentic representations consistent with the time and place of the story.
- Graphically depict the human-progress area over time, and link parallel paths where needed.
- Design an infographic that is both visually and logically cohesive.
- Use as few words as needed to communicate the story.