Dear Partners:

It is now time to begin making decisions and commitments regarding the final
project.  As you may recall, this final project provides for students (no
more than 6, 2 from each school) teams to organize and select a regional
conflict.  These teams will accomplish the following:

        a) select a regional conflict (e.g.. Kosova, Zepasta, Israel/Palestinian,
etc)
        b) prepare a detailed briefing paper regarding the history, major
protagonists (and their positions), identify and explain the previous
conflict resolution attempts that have been attempted (provided primarily on
the Jimmy Carter Home page - see WilPatterson web page).

and based upon the above
                 c) develop a conflict resolution statement.

This is a team effort, and students need to be made aware that they are
going to be evaluated on the bases of a group project.  There are several
controls we can institute to maximize individual effort.  Such as:

        1) Each member of the team can send to me (and I will distribute it over
Partners list) their assessment of the other members participation in the
group. Thus..even if the group gets say an A on this project, an individual
student (based upon student evaluations) may wind up with a C.

        2) You the professor needs to determine how much weight you will assign to
this project.

        3) You the professor needs to determine if your students will be a part of
this.

        and 4) You need to let us know whether or not your students will be
participating so that we can plan.

All of this needs to be done within the next 2 weeks if the finals project
is to commence by April 1.


Finally, I would like to have you and your students provide us some feedback
(on this forum or on the students forum) so that we can make this an even
better course for next year.  thanks..rodneycoates

rodneycoates