Have You Ever Wondered How Impactful of International, Interactive Peer-Learning Activities? Well, We Did!
And we are happy to share the impact assessment of SDG Action and Awareness Week 2022 in Koc University!
Between 28 February-3 March, Koc University organized the SDG Action & Awareness Week 2022 (SDG A&A Week) as a part of University Global Coalition action plan. In total of six event is virtually organized with the coordination of the Office of International Programs (OIP) and a group of volunteer students. This report aims to understand the social impact of the event on participant students and moderator students.
1. Creating the Content
As being aware of the importance of a human-centric design in quality education; OIP aimed to shape the SDG A&A Week events with respect to students’ needs and expectations. In the beginning of February, a brain-storming session is organized by inviting all the Global Learning and Leadership for Sustainability (https://glls.ku.edu.tr/) track program students, KUGlobalAid (https://globalaid.ku.edu.tr/) students and student club chairs. With a group of volunteers who came to this meeting, SDG A&A Week activities are shaped with one panel, one workshop and four student roundtables. The topics and the guest speakers for the student roundtables are chosen by the moderator students themselves. Each moderator gone through a workshop by the OIP on how to create a safe space in an international environment, how to create an interaction virtual event, how to manage time and how to create a roundtable structure. Impact assessment surveys and presentations were prepared a week prior to the events. Each roundtable has an expert guest speaker right after their 45 minutes to an hour of roundtable discussion.
Each of these activities were started with a little introduction of community values where participants were invited to be mindful about creating a safe space for everyone, and to use mindful listening and speaking practices for a diverse and inclusive community.
One of the activities, ‘How Do I get to Know about Sustainability? Practices in Koc Panel’, is meant to be an introductory session for Koc University students to be aware of the campus facilities and resources related with the sustainability that they could use in their university life. This panel is not included in the social impact assessment of the SDG A&A Week.
2.Impact Assessment: Methodology and Results
This impact assessment is undertaken for the following events for solely of the participant students:
· Why on Earth Should I Know about SDGs? — Workshop (28.02.2022)
· The Effect of Climate Change on Tangible Cultural Sustainability — Student Roundtable (2.03.2022 — https://youtu.be/blA6xPzF4X8)
· Economic and Socio-Cultural Effects of Wildfires — Student Roundtable (2.03.2022 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZDMd2CtMK8)
· Breathing and Drinking Microplastics: Fast Fashion — Student Roundtable (3.03.2022 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTGD2Ynf0KM)
· How Socio-Cultural Norms Shape Gender Inequality around the World — Student Roundtable (3.03.2022-https://youtu.be/0kNgzf1AiDU)
While collectively creating the events, initially targeted outcomes can be listed as following: increasing the knowledge on sustainability and SDGs on students, increasing the ability to take a holistic approach on sustainability and SDGs, increasing the awareness on global problems, increasing the ability of critical thinking on sustainability issues, increasing the cultural exchange. In order to achieve the stated outcomes, initially aimed outputs of the events can be listed as following: creating an international environment for global learning, achieving internationalization at home for students, creating an interactive environment for discussion and cultural exchange, creating peer-learning environment, creating interesting and fun session structures, creating a safe-space for everyone to share their authentic opinions.
The workshop is given by a member of the OIP, and the four roundtables are organized by the students themselves. Total number of participants for these events, excluding the guest speakers and moderators, was 66. Total number of international participants who claimed their countries during the events was 33. Participants were from Turkey, Netherlands, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Brazil, Russia, England, Palestine, Egypt and Nigeria. At the end of the events, participant students were asked to fill an anonymous online questionnaire, including scale questions and open-ended questions. Full list of questions can be found on the Appendix A.
36 out of 66 students who attended to the events participated to the questionnaire. Participants agreed that their skills to understand and criticize the concept of sustainability have increased with this event 9.14/10.00. They claimed that they were satisfied with their discussion moderator in the event 9.53/10.00. They also confirmed that they were you satisfied with the invited speaker in the event 9.75/10.00.
Participant students were also asked about the most beneficial aspect of the event as an open-ended question, and their overall additional comments. For the answers of those questions, a content analysis was conducted. According to the content analysis, the most mentioned aspect of the events was the learning outcomes. Content analysis shows that the participants mostly gain knowledge on the different aspects on and components of the issues and understand the issue in wider perspectives.
“The moderator allowed the participants to interact and discuss their opinions which made the event very beneficial in understanding different viewpoints in an entertaining and informative way.”
“Discussing the different components of the topic both with students and an expert.”
In terms of the components and methodology of the event is also highlighted in the content analysis such as being highly interactive, where students had to chance to discuss the global problems, understand the common issues, local practice differences and realize their common feelings towards global issues. Student also stated that they felt comfortable with the attitudes of the moderators to share their opinions more. Additionally, participants note that the sessions were entertaining and fun, interesting with examples and case studies, and easy to understand for everyone.
“[the moderator] was so nice and comfortable!!! Her energy helped me concentrate and share my experience.”
“To be able to hear stories from the people from different countries, we have a lot of different examples but at the end of the day, we had the same source of the problem”
Another highlighted beneficial aspect of the roundtables was the structure of the events including the international participation from other countries, discussion sessions and expert guest speakers.
“As a tourism management student, the invited speakers were a really good choice, but the roundtable methodology was the most beneficial part”
“There were some participants literally from the other side of the world, which was great to see other examples from other lands in other countries”
The moderators were also asked to write open-ended reflections about their moderating experiences. Main differentiation of their experiences from of the participants can be stated as the improvement of their soft skills, such as time management, stress management, encouraging people to talk, adapt quickly, develop new strategies based on needs during the roundtable and flexibility. Moreover, since the moderators were responsible to find guest speakers for their roundtables, they expand their academic and professional network.
“I contacted with the speakers (during organization of the event); hence, the event also served as a network opportunity for me.”
Parallel with the participants’ comments, moderators as well stated that these roundtable events were beneficial for them in terms of seeing other perspectives and viewpoints from different cultures, interconnectedness and diversity, as well as the quality of the discussion. They also stated that despite the quality of the discussions, low number of participants would be an area of improvement for the further practices.
“I also saw that the quality of the conversation that we have is not dependent on the quantity of the people (…).”
“It was nice to get to know the diversity of thought amongst the audience.”
3.Discussion and Further Recommendations
As stated, the SDG Action & Awareness Week 2022 in Koc University is designed to create an impact on the participants with a series of planned outputs and outcomes of the events. Since the outcomes would be intangible and the observation length is extremely low, the impact assessment solely relies on the statements of the respondents. According to the results, the observed outputs and outcomes of the activities corresponds with the initially designed ones. Most highlighted and important practices from these series of events are the preparation and attitudes of the moderators, safe and international environment of the events, interactive roundtables, whiteboards and discussions as well as the case study examples. From the scale and open-ended questions, the results show that the participants understood the concepts of sustainability with a holistic, inclusive and diverse perspective.
The number of participants, on the other hand, were lower than expected. For further activities, announcements and promotions activities of the events would be increased, as well as prospect internal and external stakeholder partnerships.
The workshop and roundtables are designed to be approximately 2 hours per session, and the survey are conducted right after the sessions where the student had no chance to practice their new perspectives on their real life. Hence, further impact assessments can be conducted with a focus group by a longer period of observation.
APPENDIX A
Student Roundtable and Workshop Questionnaire
· Do you think that your skills to understand and criticize the concept of sustainability have increased with this event? Please score 1 “disagree”, 10 “agree” on a scale of 1 to 10.
· What was the most beneficial aspect of the event?
· Were you satisfied with your discussion moderator in the event? Please score 1 as the lowest, 10 as the highest.
· Were you satisfied with the invited speaker in the event? Please score 1 as the lowest, 10 as the highest.
Overall additional comments:
Impact Assessment and Report by Pelin Sürmeli
