WELCOME TO. YaLa's Online Academy The Largest Classroom in the Middle East and North Africa

Transcription

1 WELCOME TO YaLa's Online Academy The Largest Classroom in the Middle East and North Africa Pilot Program Booklet January-December 2013

2 FOREWARD After a year and a half of activity, and with +220,000 members, YaLa is embarking on a new and exciting project the YaLa-Young Leaders Online Academy (YLO@). YaLa students from across the region will study together online in YLO@, in fields such as leadership, entrepreneurship, business, technology, regional development and social media. All YLO@ pilot courses will be conducted online, primarily through 'Coursera' - the world's leading distance learning platform ( - which has partnered with YaLa-Young Leaders to create an online space especially for YLO@ and its students, and in cooperation with top universities such as Princeton, Michigan, Vanderbilt and University of Virginia. In addition, YLO@ Students will receive special modules and lectures from leading experts in the world of Business, Entrepreneurship and Social Media, in cooperation with companies such as Microsoft and Hewlett Packard. YLO@ students will also enjoy an online campus, provided by the online avatar platform 'Shaker'. YLO@ Studies will be divided into 4 Departmental Units: 1. Business and Technology 2. Regional Cooperation and Development 3. Modern Political Activism and Diplomacy 4. General (a sampling from each of the other 3 departments)

3 1. Business and Technology Studies will examine business and management conceptual frameworks and strategies with a specific focus on hi-tech industries and entrepreneurship. Students will also learn key components of business development, marketing and management. Studies will emphasize new technologies and media and their effective implementation in the realm of Business. 1.1 NETWORKS: FRIENDS, MONEY AND BYTES University: Princeton University Professor: Mung Chiang, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of Princeton EDGE Lab. Course Duration: 10 weeks Course Format: Two 75min Lectures per week and weekly assignment. 8 hrs work per week. What makes CDMA work for my Smartphone? How does Google rank WebPages? When can I trust an average rating on Amazon? Why does Wikipedia even work? How do I viralize a YouTube video and tip a Groupon deal? How do I influence people on Facebook and Twitter? This course is about formulating and answering these questions. Throughout the course, there will be about 10 open-ended, project-like challenges (in social and technological network engineering). About 10 leading US companies and venture capitalists in the networking industry have agreed to screen the finalists selected by the teaching staff, and explore opportunities with the selected students to turn their ideas and prototypes into new products and companies. You pour your creativity and energy in this course, and we will help create career-changing opportunities for you.

4 1.2 FOUNDATIONS OF BUSINESS STRATEGY University: University of Virginia Professor: Michael J. Lenox, Associate Dean and Executive Director of Darden's Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation Course Duration: 6 weeks Course Format: 10 and 15 minute videos with short quiz. 2-3 hrs work per week. This course will explore the underlying theory and frameworks that provide the foundations of a successful business strategy. It will develop your ability to think strategically by providing you the tools for conducting a strategic analysis. Strategic analysis is critical for analyzing the competitive context in which an organization operates and for making reasoned and reasonable recommendations for how that organization should position itself and what actions it should take to maximize value creation. Aspiring managers, entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, analysts, consultants all may find value in mastering these fundamentals. 1.3 MODULE: Microsoft Business Start-Up Units The Microsoft Business Start-Up Module will cover the light-technological aspects of marketing, presenting, investment seeking and more that concerns anyone who is looking to open a startup company. Instructors will be leading Microsoft staff members and experts.

5 2. Regional Cooperation And Development Studies will explore through various prisms the unique aspects of the MENA region, with an emphasis on the Mediterranean Basin and its potential to transform political, social and cultural tensions into mutual cooperation and prosperity; and on the role of entrepreneurship and tourism in promoting peacebuilding and local economic development Courses will aim to provide opportunities for exchanges, tours, encounters with civil society and public sector players in the region, as well as for the development of collaborative projects. 2.1 LEADING STRATEGIC INNOVATION IN ORGANIZATIONS University: Vanderbilt University Professor: David A. Owens, Professor of the Practice of Management and Director of the Executive Development Institute Course Duration: 8 weeks Course Format: class modules consisting of assigned readings, lecture videos, individual assignments and team deliverables. 6-8 hrs per week. This course is intended for people seeking to improve their ability to manage creativity, innovation and change. Using an innovation constraints framework, participants will learn how to best manage people when innovation is the goal. Upon completion of the course participants will understand how to manage and participate in teams pursuing innovative ends; diagnose innovation failures at the individual, group, and organizational levels; brainstorm ideas and approaches to solutions for all types of problems; innovate a product, process, or service for a local client; and develop an innovation strategy

6 2.2 MODEL THINKING University: University of Michigan Professor: Scott Page, Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, and Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Course Duration: 10 weeks Course Format: overview lecture followed by a lecture on the technical details. 4-8 hrs per week. We live in a complex world with diverse people, firms, and governments whose behaviors aggregate to produce novel, unexpected phenomena. We see political uprisings, market crashes, and a never ending array of social trends. How do we make sense of it? Models. Evidence shows that people who think with models consistently outperform those who don't. Models help us to better organize information. Models improve our abilities to make accurate forecasts. They help us make better decisions and adopt more effective strategies. The models covered in this class provide a foundation for future social science classes, whether they be in economics, political science, business, or sociology. 2.3 REGIONAL YOUTH LEADERSHIP PROGRAM AQABA The first part of the program will take place during 4 months in which 30 Israelis and 30 Palestinians will participate in online courses in YLO@'s Regional Cooperation and Development Department. Students will then be selected to participate in one of two groups: One will take courses between January and April 2013, the other between June and September Excelling students will be selected to participate in a two day workshop in Aqaba in fall 2013 alongside their peers from across the MENA region, where they will discuss cooperation and develop projects to promote positive change throughout the region. The program is funded by the U.S. State Department in partnership with Search for Common Ground.

7 3. Modern Political Activism and Diplomacy Studies will provide students with knowledge and understanding of the driving forces and institutions in the global social and political spheres as well as skills needed to successfully govern and influence them, focusing on issues such as modern tools for activism, e- diplomacy, public diplomacy, negotiation, conflict management, inter-personal and cross-cultural communication, decisionmaking, consensus-building, participatory processes and the analytics of strategic thinking in the global system. 3.1 CRITICAL THINKING AND GLOBAL CHALLENGES University: University of Edinburgh Professors: Celine Caquineau and Mayank Dutia, Biomedical Scientists. Course Duration: 5 weeks Course Format: short weekly lectures with quizzes, additional exercises, case studies and a discussion forum. 3-4 hrs per week. Critical thinking is the ability to gather and assess information and evidence in a balanced and reflective way to reach conclusions that are justified by reasoned argument based on the available evidence. Critical thinking is a key skill in the information age, valuable in all disciplines and professions. This introductory course will give you the opportunity to better understand what critical thinking is, and to practice and enhance your critical thinking skills. This course is not a course on the global challenges themselves; instead it uses the context of these thought-provoking challenges to practice critical thinking.

8 3.2 SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS University: University of Michigan Professor: Lada Adamic, Associate Professor in the School of Information and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems. Course Duration: 8 weeks. Course Format: 8-12 minute lecture videos with integrated quiz questions, optional programming assignments. 3-4 hrs per week. Everything is connected: people, information, events and places, all the more so with the advent of online social media. A practical way of making sense of the tangle of connections is to analyze them as networks. In this course you will learn about the structure and evolution of networks, drawing on knowledge from disciplines as diverse as sociology, mathematics, computer science, economics, and physics. Online interactive demonstrations and hands-on analysis of real-world data sets will focus on a range of tasks: from identifying important nodes in the network, to detecting communities, to tracing information diffusion and opinion formation. 3.3 MODULE: Leading Social Media Expert Lectures The Module will focus on how to use social networks for activism, marketing through social networks and designing and updating Facebook pages for social change. Leading social media experts from Silicon Valley will be the instructors.

9 We look forward to seeing you among our students and to join hands with you in creating a new wave of empowerment, leadership and solidarity of the young generation in the Middle East and North Africa. For further question or clarifications: yloa.enrollment@gmail.com Skype: YaLa-Young Leaders Sun-Thu, 9:00-11:00 GMT and 14:00-16:00 GMT