Month: October 2020

Group: Allison and Ugochi

 

1. System #1:You are chief of police, how do you solve (use systems thinking)

To try to solve this problem of mass corruption in Afghanistan’s policing system, we would start by requiring all police stations to have “role calls.” By requiring commanders to report exactly who is working everyday we will be able to determine who the “ghost” policemen are. This would be our regulation aspect to the system. Then, when we determine who the “ghost” policemen are, we will be able to stop paying them, and in turn use that money to give all the real policemen and the commanders a raise. That will be our leverage point by raising morale. It will incentivize the commanders to actually report the real numbers by giving them monetary incentives. In addition, a way to increase public trust in law and order, we will make public statements to each community on who is on the police force. That way the community can feel more connected to law enforcement and feel more safe, it will create holism within the system.

2. System #2: How does she solve the hyacinth problem? Use systems approach.

To solve this problem, she should hire some of the workers in the community to help her with her business. Since her need for hyacinth is increasing substantially, she will need more than four people to cut it and collect it. Since collecting the hyacinth benefits each member of the community as a whole because it decreases the spread of disease, and makes it easier for fishermen to access the lake, they should be happy about her business, they were only upset because she was making money off of it. So, by differentiation, she can hire some workers within the community to cut the hyacinth, some to crush it, and some to bring it to the workshop, depending on their specialization. Each worker will be putting in a different input based on what their job is, but it will be to attain the same goal of creating compost and briquettes to make the lakes cleaner (equifinality). All of these jobs create holism in the system because every aspect is completing the system by making the community more safe. Our solution is multifinal because fishermen now have more space to fish, as the hyacinth is being cleared away, less disease is bring spread, workers in the community that are hired to help clear the hyacinth economically benefit from new jobs, and the hyacinth crushed and used for compost and briquettes can potentially have good environmental benefits because it is a good alternative fuel source.

Describe at least 5 partnerships that were formed (before or) during the GSIF fieldwork experience that impacted the success or failure of your venture. Please identify partnerships at the individual, team, and Lehigh / GSIF level.

1. KazNU, AlmaU, SDU
   1. What constituted the partnership?
      1. Coordinators, faculty and students.
   2. How did the partner help you? How did you help them?
      1. By talking to faculty, coordinators, and students at these universities, we were able to better understand what the education system looks like in Kazakhstan. We were also able to get feedback on several aspects of our Save Tuba app. We also helped them by giving feedback on their project ideas as well.
   3. Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?
      1. It was a symbiotic relationship because they were able to give feedback on our project ideas, and we were able to give feedback on theirs.
   4. What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?
      1. If we could have someone on our team directly working with them on their project, like they do with us, it would make this a more equitable relationship.
2. Nazarbayev Schools
   1. What constituted the partnership?
      1. Teachers, students, and school administrators.
   2. How did the partner help you? How did you help them?
      1. The teachers will help us with implementing our app into their curriculum and introducing it to their students. School administrators will help with logistical aspects of implementation and connection between schools. By using the app in schools, we will be able to reach more youth in Kazakhstan. We can provide teachers and schools with a useful educational tool that will (hopefully) engage their students in a fun way.
   3. Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?
      1. It is a symbiotic relationship because we both have a goal of making Almaty and Kazakhstan a more sustainable place, and we both have a goal of educating the youth. Our partnership will accomplish this for both of us.
   4. What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?
      1. We could strengthen this partnership by talking with higher ups at the school to make our app a part of the curriculum for more schools. Also if we were able to talk face to face, it would strengthen it more.
3. Other schools (similar to Nazarbayev Schools)
   1. What constituted the partnership?
      1. Teachers, students, and school administrators.
   2. How did the partner help you? How did you help them?
      1. The teachers will help us with implementing our app into their curriculum and introducing it to their students. School administrators will help with logistical aspects of implementation and connection between schools. By using the app in schools, we will be able to reach more youth in Kazakhstan. We can provide teachers and schools with a useful educational tool that will (hopefully) engage their students in a fun way.
   3. Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?
      1. It is a symbiotic relationship because we both have a goal of making Almaty and Kazakhstan a more sustainable place, and we both have a goal of educating the youth. Our partnership will accomplish this for both of us.
   4. What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?
      1. We could strengthen this partnership by talking with higher ups at the school to make our app a part of the curriculum for more schools. Also if we were able to talk face to face, it would strengthen it more.
4. Local businesses
   1. What constituted the partnership?
      1. Store/shop owners.
   2. How did the partner help you? How did you help them?
      1. Local business owners can help us incentivize our users more. By providing real world rewards, such as a voucher to a local store, players will become more connected with their community and more immersed into the app storyline. It will help us make the users more engaged, and help the business owners expand their customer base.
   3. Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?
      1. It is symbiotic because it will help us make the users more engaged, and help the business owners expand their customer base. We will both gain from it.
   4. What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?
      1. We could strengthen this partnership by getting the local businesses to be more environmentally sustainable as well. We can introduce ways they can become more sustainable to further promote our goal.
5. The city of Almaty
   1. What constituted the partnership?
      1. Officials and people of Almaty.
   2. How did the partner help you? How did you help them?
      1. The city of Almaty can help us in our research of levels of recycling (to help us determine if we are achieving our goal). If they help us with our app by making more things in the city environmentally friendly (e.g., making recycling more accessible, having set days for collection, etc.) our app will help make their city cleaner.
   3. Was this a symbiotic relationship? Why or why not?
      1. It is a symbiotic relationship because our app will eventually make Almaty a cleaner and more sustainable city. So by the city working with us to make our app accessible, we will be helping them improve the city.
   4. What would help strengthen this partnership and make it more equitable?
      1. If we could talk with officials to implement utilities of functions that would make it easier for citizens to be environmentally conscious and sustainable, that would strengthen our partnership, and our ultimate goal.

Collaborative Plan (Updated): Bishoy, Tommy, Ugochi, Allison

Goals

• Project Goal: To create our app, Save Tuba, that will help the citizens in Kazakhstan become more sustainable and environmentally aware.
  • To measure the success of our project, we need to collect data on how many people use the app, on the rate of recycling in Kazakhstan, and possibly do interviews to see how people think it has changed their lives. There will also be quizzes in the app to track environmental education of the users.
• Personal Goal (Alli): To broaden my knowledge on the school systems in Kazakhstan, and learn how to integrate a gamified, educational app into their curriculum. Also to gain a better understanding of the culture in Almaty.
• Personal Goal (Ugochi): To understand the in-depth process behind successful and impactful smart innovations, and leave the project with an ability to implement similar innovations in other cities.
• Person Goal: (Tommy): Learn the process of implementing a gamified learning tool into schools. Better understand how partnerships work to complete a task.
• Personal Goal: (Bishoy): Improve writing and research skills to better understand how impactful papers are written and how to get published in the research role. To set realistic expectations for our app to synthesize a distribution process where it reaches the most people.

Roles

• All of us have been working on publications. Each of us have an E4C article published, we have a paper accepted for GHTC, and an IEEE paper in the works.
• Now, as our project is beginning to have more concrete tasks and has a more detailed plan, we have focused on various subgroups. Tommy and Bishoy are working on the app development and testing, Ugochi is working on the wireframe and the visuals, and Alli is working on the sustainability tasks. However, there is overlap; we are each helping each other with all the tasks if we need help.
• We don’t have one project manager, but we each sort of head various tasks. So some of us are the “project managers” of a certain publication, or of creating the MVP, etc. Ugochi and Tommy worked on the venture over the summer, so they are most knowledgeable on the project right now.

Procedures

• For decision making, I think we should strive for consensus, but if we hit a specifically difficult topic, then it might have to be majority rules.
• Right now we have been doing a lot of communication online, and it seems like it is going to have to continue to be that way. However, as many zoom meetings, or “face-to-face” simulations we can have, the better. Texts (GroupMe) and emails are good substitutes when we cannot zoom right away.
• For meeting roles, it depends on the meeting, as our roles will shift. However, usually we all do a good job of each taking notes, and all keeping time in mind, and facilitating together.
• We are meeting at an additional time (aside from the one with Khanjan). We have been having a zoom call every Thursday evening to debrief on the work we have done, and plan out what we still have to do.

Relationships

• Everyone on our team has different strengths that play well into making us work effectively. We have various majors and disciplines across our team, including computer science, engineering, and international relations. This allows us to use each other’s strengths to solve any issues we may come across. We also all have different cultural backgrounds which helps us look at everything with different perspectives.
• Our team name is Save Tuba.

 

[Individual] List ten specific ways in which your teaming approach has changed/evolved since you started, teamwork skills you have developed, and lessons you have learned:

1. I learned that it is very important to take action and get stuff done, but validation from team members is as important, not only to make sure I don’t have mistakes, but to ensure that everyone is on the same page of the project.
2. Each one of us should take the task he/she is most comfortable with, in terms of expertise.
3. Make sure we are always doing something to advance the venture forward; in other words, make sure we do not have weeklong pauses with no work getting done.
4. Everything should be done at the right time, so we don’t waste time. For example, there would be no point of applying to funding at the beginning of our project, rather spend time planning the project thoroughly and effectively.
5. Make sure you have done enough research before jumping to conclusions. At the beginning of the semester we jumped right into the app idea, without doing enough research, then we had to reconsider our idea and do more research first.
6. We are now more comfortable with each other, thus we are able to assign tasks to each other and call each other out on unfinished tasks without feeling uncomfortable.
7. It is very important to keep connections. Our connections with our partners have gotten weaker and there is a need to validate our app, but we didn’t exactly stay in touch and ensure the connection is live, thus it will require more work to jumpstart the connections.
8. I learned to understand that everyone has their own life going and on and I should understand that not all of us may have the time to spend on this project as much as needed.
9. We definitely grew to produce care more about the quality of the work we get done, rather than just getting it over with.
10. Our relationship with our advisor is now more open and we are able to easily express concerns and he is also able to understand that we have classes and other commitments.
11. My time management skills improved to allocate more time for this project and get things done on time.