Ken's response to Writing Assignment #1

As promised, I will do my best to do the same writing assignments as you.

In this case, as I consider a long-term vision and short-term goals, I would like to consider our course as an “organization,” with me as “leader,” and all of us together exploring terra incognita (unknown territory). Perhaps by doing this you can get a better sense of what this course is intended to be and your part in it.

Long-term vision

Perkins talks about how Shackleton had to “be willing to find a ‘new mark’” (16) such as when he told his crew “So now we’ll go home” (16) when he lost his ship (and hopes of crossing Antarctica). This course, for me, is a new mark—I have abandoned the popular “Adventure Travel” course that I taught for many years in order to take an entirely new direction with this course.

My intention is to create a course that combines an interest in organizational development (how organizations and the people in them function, develop, manage change, etc) and such interrelated topics as leadership, negotiation, conflict resolution, team building, etc. as outlined in the description and syllabus for the course. But these topics interlink with a wide variety of other social behavioral interests such as interpersonal communication, emotional and social intelligence, group dynamics, human motivation, etc. —all of which are also fascinating. The problem is that whole books have been written about each of these topics. It is a challenge knowing where to begin and what to include, while at the same time providing some sort of unifying theme for the course.

So…this course will offer a sampling of many of these aspects of human behavior in organizational settings, with an opportunity for you at the end (with your final presentations) to focus on an area of particular interest that you can present and share with the class. But to provide a unifying theme, we will focus on the topic of leadership throughout the course via our text and our blog entries.

Short-term goals

A big goal right now is getting us all onboard with our blogs. I can then link us all together so we can work as a team sharing with each other our thoughts, dreams, goals, etc. Thanks to the many of you who have already sent me your blog addresses.

Another, related goal, is to get a better sense of what each of you is thinking so that we can negotiate our way forward with this course based on your input.

Perkins mentions how Shackleton was able to “create engaging distractions”(26) to keep his crew motivated. I will try to do the same. I hope our chocolate-covered almond “snake eggs” served as such a distraction. I will search for more as we move forward.

This is enough for me for now, and I look forward to hearing from you.