SEL for YWP Social-Emotional Skills for Youth Waging Peace - High Level Design Document

PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK

The course draws from the EMC2 and CIT/SEEK frameworks to create a learning experience relevant to prevention of violent extremism (PVE) through education initiatives.

The PVE framework is derived from the UNESCO PVE HQ Policy Brief (2018)

Builds on existing MGIEP PVE initiatives and insights from the Youth Waging Peace activities.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN APPROACH

Gamification through narrative and scenarios to engage youth (18-35) audiences
Practical embodied learning through training of the CIT skills
Critical inquiry through readings and subject matter

COURSE STRUCTURE

UNIT LEVEL DESIGN

Learning Outcomes are given by simple alignment of the three elements - scenario + skill + subject matter
The learner explores a fictional scenario or learns a new embodied skill. They are offered readings and subject material relevant to the unit topic. Learners then formulate reactions and possible solutions to the fictional scenarios which are open ended. The goal is to prepare learners to formulate their own real world PVE community-level intervention.

VISUAL DESIGN

Character design process documented here

Several visual styles and approaches were explored (dark & edgy, cartoon, doodles), finally settling on a "comic book look" with a reflective, introspective and moody feel. The choice of style does not glorify or sensationalise violence and encourages critical thinking about the position of the individual in society.

Artist Sachin Jhadav was selected to work as an Illustrator on this course based on internal discussions, preliminary sketches and draft outputs of the narrator character and one location.

The narrator figure "Kalamfariku" observing the city of "Ayahou" from a distance. "Kalamfariku" is a play on the Arabic term for "nonsensical" and is based on the traditional "griot" figure - a wandering storyteller.

Character Design Evolution

Characters are narrative "cues" and not meant to stereotype any race, religion or ethnicity. Yet, they possess enough level of detail for the learner to develop an impression and react to the character.

The characters offer suggestive cues for various kinds of imaginative possibilities for who they might be. After our first encounter with the character where we see their faces and are provided a minimal biography, they face away for the rest of the course. This is to symbolise that the learner is engaging the character from their point of view, and is free to imbue the character with their own values, ideas and preferences.

Final Character Set: Amum - Wondoo - Kalamfariku - Kimsha - Magrub

Location Design Evolution

Detailed creative briefs were developed to create a fictional city of "Ahayou" - a Dinka word meaning peace. The city was imagined as a middle-income country with uneven development. Various locations in the city were imagined that allow learners to "unpack" various themes that might occur when dealing with the diverse phenomenon related to prevention of violent extremism.

Creative Briefs to the Illustrator based on architectural elements drawn from Fez, Paris, Barbados and other global locations. Ahayou's architectural texture appears as a composite style mixing diverse elements and seeks to suggest a city with "cross-over cosmopolitanism". Older parts of the city have colonial style architecture, while newer parts of the city are more urbanised. The marginalized members of society, the "Kimtocks" are in the less developed parts of the city.

B/W mock-ups of city locations

Colourised city locations

NARRATIVE DESIGN

Early draft of the narrative, combining character, location and story.

The creative breakthrough on the narrative design occurred when the linear moralistic narrative was replaced by an open-ended non-linear narrative. The original storyboard depicted the characters carrying out a bombing in Ahayou and being killed by security forces by the end of the course.

The new narrative was based on a 5 stage story evolution that dovetailed into the pedagogical frameworks - harmonizing the story with the course content. Click the links below to explore the scenarios built on Genially, or scroll through the selected screen grabs.

Blending Narrative and Pedagogy

Stage 1 : Explore Ahayou: A non-linear open ended exploration of the city and the characters. Learner develops first impressions and Empathy.
Stage 2: The Monday Blasts: A real-time episodic reportage of the events leading up to a bombing that occurs in multiple locations in Ahayou carried out by an unknown group. Learner must use Self-cultivation skills/Mindfulness to respond to the scenario.
Stage 3: 3 Months Earlier: Three months before the Monday blasts we meet the characters at different locations and struggling with personal dilemmas/cognitive dissonance. Learner must use Relating to others skills/Compassion to respond to the scenario.
Stage 4: 6 Months earlier: Six months before the Monday blasts we meet the characters and are introduced to the community-level and social dilemmas in Ahayou. Learner must use Engaging in Systems skills/Critical Enquiry to respond to the scenario.
Stage 5: 1 year earlier: One year before the Monday blasts we meet the characters in Ahayou and the learner must use all available skills (EMC2+CIT/SEEK skills) to design a real-world community level intervention to prevent the Monday attacks from ever taking place.

The combination of character and location creates an open-ended interplay between "structure and agency" and opens up multiple pathways to talk about various PVE themes. These range from individual level issues such as anger and alienation (pull factors), through to system level issues such as discrimination and marginalisation (push factors). Various additional themes are also present at the discursive level, such as sports in PVE, dignity of labour, radicalisation that occurs in detention centres, decolonisation, and religious extremism that occurs through distortion/misinterpretation of historical narratives.

UI/UX

The course was built with multiple course authoring tools and integrated on FramerSpace (FS), UNESCO-MGIEP's custom Learning Management System. CIT elements were (pre-built) on Articulate Storyline. The Ahayou elements were built on Genially and FS. The emphasis was on building the course for low-bandwidth settings and for making sure at least 2/3 of the course loaded and was able to be delivered. The course was also designed to be translation friendly for future deployment into multiple languages.

The course featured a custom colour coded icon set that primes the learner to various types of course content and is friendly to learners from low-digital literacy backgrounds. Blue icons = subject material Red icons = important course admin related Yellow icons = reflect then respond Green icons = take an action

COURSE CONSTRUCTION

The course was built with an agile methodology with multiple short reviews and adjustment cycles based on internal discussions. Modules were rough built, wire framed and then fleshed out. Two significant iterations and major evolutions occurred.

GANTT for DID, Illustrator & SME - for 4 modules

FEEDBACK & TESTING

Internal team/Peer review
External SME review
Learner feedback

EVALUATION

The assessment component of the course consists of completion markers where a minimum amount of the course has to be navigated. Word-clouds and sentiment analysis were proposed as ways to evaluate qualitative responses at scale. (These features were in-development on FS at close of consultancy.) This approach was suggested as a way out of over-reliance on MCQs, especially given the "fuzzy" nature of PVE and the nature of the course design which privileged evaluation, synthesis and creative responses. Nevertheless demonstrating "delta" in qualitative learning is always a challenge!

The course is completed when the learner submits a community-level plan for a PVE intervention based on the skills they have acquired. A certificate is awarded when the course is fully navigated and a plan is submitted.

Further research is required to determine and measure qualitative change in learners, possibly based on pre and post course questionnaires designed along psychometric scales.

RESEARCH

PVE involves contextual and complex systems. However terms like push & pull and drivers are epistemically derived from simple physical systems favouring linear physical causality and predictable responses. While these terms serve as simple points of reference, a more nuanced approach requires appreciation for the fact that in a complex domain cause and effect are not easily identifiable and are loosely coupled at best. There is no best practice.

Following the Cynefin framework the preferred approach is to

PROBE - SENSE - RESPOND ...to determine... EMERGENT PRACTICE

Wallner (2020) and Davies (2018) provide useful literature surveys for global education based PVE initiatives. Approaches based on digital pedagogy are in a unique position to engage learners from a variety of contexts in the online space. Qualitative responses from learners are a rich source of insight and area of future focus. The entire course can be considered a safe-to-fail experiment, one that reveals granular and contextual responses by learners that demonstrate potential for "amplification".

Subsequent to roll out of the modules, the first round of workshop/learner trials and learner feedback/ data analysis, provides an opportunity for writing up a case study that meets NESTA Level 3 standards, and deepens MGIEP contributions to the UNESCO Preventing Violent Extremism Worldwide report (2018:p5) from the perspective of capacity building for teachers and policy-makers.

Since base content for the scenarios were partially derived from the MGIEP produced Action Guidelines for Prevention of Violent Extremism (2018) report, the end-to-end engagement (stories from youth, by the youth, back to the youth) will make for a notable case study of granular ground up policy making.

Finally, a UNESCO-MGIEP theory of change with respect to PVE and a risk assessment methodology for identifying vulnerable groups based on research findings, are concrete steps forward.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

Number of learners signed up for the course. Target 5000+ learners
Positive learner feedback. Target +70% positive user experience
Sustainable development and world peace. Target: TBC.

Design by Ram Ganesh Kamatham

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Ram Ganesh Kamatham

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