Friday, December 6, 2013

Reflection Blog

            Over the course of this semester our group detailed developments in the news about what was going on during the Syrian Civil War. At the beginning of the semester Syria was one of the hot news topics, showing up prominently in stories across media outlets each week. A lot of this interest stemmed from the seeming possibility that the U.S. might become involved in the conflict. In reality though, no concrete intervention ever came to pass. In my opinion, it never even seemed like the U.S. was really going to get involved beyond Obama’s “limited strike,” and this was mostly just hyped up by media organizations that knew that they could tantalize their audiences by talking about the possibility so much. The next stage of news focused heavily on Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s decision to acquiesce to the Geneva Convention’s requirements on the use and possession of chemical weapons. A plan was developed and will apparently be brought to fruition over a period of time. Though violence is still ongoing, with the fading of the possibility that the U.S. might become involved, the media have seemed to back off significantly from detailing the events in Syria. Most news stories deal with specific conflicts on the ground and haven’t seemed to reach the same prominence that they did earlier this semester.
            Generally our group formula involved meeting once a week to work on the blog or designating one person to write it themselves. When we met as a group, people would generally have researched or kept up with the topic throughout the week. It was then interesting to see what each person thought was the most important event and what everyone had learned or read about. Thus, this turned into a good format for discussing the topic with others as opposed to simply reading a few news stories yourself.
            I rarely look forward to taking part in a group project, and if this was an exception it was a small one. Typically you watch as some people take it seriously, while others contribute next to nothing. And there is really no realistic way of avoiding this. On the bright side, though, this group was not too bad in the grand scheme of things. But in general I do not think that group projects are a particularly effective way of encouraging learning, though I cannot personally think of any other way of organizing this specific project. Anyhow, I was able to learn more in depth about the Syrian Civil War than I would have been likely to learn otherwise, so I see it as relatively worthwhile.

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