Author Biography: Lisa Martin is a twenty year educator, having taught in traditional, nontraditional and online schools, both

in California and in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates and the Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She founded two highly successful Model UN programs while overseas, and is the originator of the first online debates in 2010. Lisa is also a strong proponent of studentteacher collaborative education models, and recently contributed to a Counterpoints in the Post Modern Education Theory volume entitled Assault on Kids. A Californian native, Lisa currently resides in Amman, Jordan Activity Summary
The story of creating the worlds first online Model United Nations program is one that began with my short time as an online educator, a dramatic change from my nearly 20 years in a primarily traditional high school environment. It was, however, the international online school that I worked at from 20092010 that provided me the opportunity to try my hand at bringing a highly regarded academic simulation, Model United Nations, into an online environment-something that had never been previously attempted. Class or subject area: Humanities/Social Studies/Model United Nations Grade level(s): 9-12++ Specific learning objectives: Online debates that mimic Model United Nations simulations Unparalleled leadership opportunities for students Global collaboration on substantive international problems Problem solving and debate in an online environment Synchronous document writing Responsible and academic use of social media

Anniversary Book Project

5th

Crowdsourcing Model United Nations:

The Birth of O-MUN and Online Debates

By: Lisa Martin Creative Commons License: CC BY-NC-ND Author contact: 3dragons.lm@gmail.com

The story of creating the worlds first online Model United Nations program is one that began with my short time as an online educator, a dramatic change from my nearly 20 years in a primarily traditional high school environment. My teaching experience had ranged from U.S. classrooms to international schools in Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur, and back to California as an educator working with struggling high school students. It was, however, the international online school that I worked at from 2009-2010 that provided me the opportunity to try my hand at bringing a highly regarded academic simulation, Model United Nations, into an online environment-something that had never been previously attempted. The cast of characters in this unfolding story are global, diverse, and multi-generational. Blazing this trail alongside myself is a brilliant young man, affectionately known as JZ, currently attending a university in the U.S. A small group of immensely talented young men and women, all of them almost three decades my junior, are also a big part of O-MUNs success. The initial members of the O-MUN family included high school students in Singapore, Malaysia, Lebanon, the UK, and the USA. An early leadership team included a student each from Tanzania and Malaysia, a Sudanese transplant attending USC in southern California, and a brilliant and dedicated university student in Hong Kong, who rounded out the main cast of characters. As developed by the core O-MUN leadership team, early efforts resulted in a program that mirrored current and highly popular Model United Nations simulations. Students would be assigned different countries, and they would in turn research a problem, attempt to find a solution, and ultimately work through this potential solution in a highly structured debate. In keeping with MUN tradition, the debates were run and organized by students for students. The difference with our program is that all of this occurs online, the students are from diverse locations around the world, and the debates are run along traditional lines using technology easily available to everyone. An online debate on piracy in the Indian Ocean. Students are logged in as countries and the resolution to be debated had been worked on synchronously on TitanPad, here pulled into the online classroom (Blackboard Collaborate) Origins of Online Debate Online debates made their first appearance in January and February of 2010. In A recording of a debate can be found here an effort to create a model for my MUN club members in the online international school in which I worked at the time, I asked JZ to help me coordinate a mock debate. What had initially been planned as a fifteen minute canned simulation turned

into something far more exciting. We opened the Elluminate Live (now Blackboard Collaborate) virtual classroom, and knew almost immediately we were on to something big. JZs call for delegates had spread. MUN gone viral! we joked as students began to log in from locations around the world. Some delegates immediately went to work drafting a resolution, while others simply wanted to check out the rooms features. All were excited. Early participants, in addition to my own clubs eager participation, included some big names in the overseas MUN circuit. In one instance, our room stayed open for almost 19 hours, as waves of first time online delegates logged in and out of my classroomfirst from Asia, then Africa, then Europe and North America, and then from Asia again. Using the simple text tools in Blackboard Collaborate, we posted the resolution onto the online whiteboard, created a new login feature designed to alphabetically list delegates according to their assigned nations for roll call, and created the first online system to submit amendments. Having yet to discover Skype chat, we opened my second classroom and used that for moderator back-channel communication. JZ tinkered behind the scenes and created an intercom system, and even continuously piped in music. At our second online debate we had a world-class THIMUN moderating team, complete with Presidents and Deputy Secretaries General from this esteemed MUN program. We invited members of our schools press team to cover the event , and also had a few key MUN directors from other schools in attendance. With some of the worlds top overseas circuit delegates, this was the worlds first online MUN debate. A month later, we came together again and debated the issue of green house gas emissions. These first two endeavors were resounding successes, and delegate feedback via Survey Monkey confirmed that online debates were viable, engaging, and revolutionary, to use the words of the participants. The school I worked for, howevera large corporation and major player in online educationdid what many businesses do when innovation emerges from its ranks. The school called in its attorneys and pulled the plug on future global debates. JZ took down the small website we had used to organize the delegates, and the program was put on ice. The Hiatus The next 18 months were a period of both professional frustration and of a growing realization that online debates could develop into a tremendous educational program. The corporation that owned and managed my school saw the potential in developing an online MUN program, however, and it appeared that my full-time job the following year would be to develop a closed MUN program for their tens of thousands of students in the U.S. It became apparent that the school felt uncomfortable with a more open platform (a platform I was proposing). In fairness to my employer, this is an issue many schools struggle with today. In the case of truly global debates, a closed, slow moving internal program simply would not have been able to accommodate that, however. Thus, we faced a dilemma. In addition, in the midst of these discussions, my husband was offered a job back in the United Arab Emirates. Difficulties securing my work visa, philosophical differences with my supervisor, and a codirector/minder who had no experience in Model United Nations, did not bode well for the kind of dynamic program I had originally envisioned. I then made the hardest professional decision of my life. I walked away from my virtual classroom, the great enabler of the first online MUN program. I read my contract and took seriously my non-compete clause, and waited. O-MUN Launched In many respects this hiatus after our brief experiment with online debates allowed for some needed introspection. I gained fresh insights into what I felt were the greatest strengths of a future program. Teachers and serious student practitioners of MUN are familiar with these critical components: rele-

vancy, engagement, research, and the thrill of debate itself. The aborted MUN program would, if done globally, address far deeper educational needs and integrate numerous academic, technological, social, and global citizenship skills all in one program. In this sense it appeared to be both unique and open to unlimited potential. By keeping it free, and allowing for easy replication, online debates could become a democratic and open platform for global youth, and provide a place to study substantive issues requiring collaboration on and appreciation for complexity. This approach to education seemed to be lacking in so many places the world over, so it seemed like a wonderful opening for an online debate program on a global scale, combining high academic standards and best practices in technology, global education, and social media use. When my co-collaborator suggested in late spring of 2011 that we consider re-launching online debates, I counted the days left on my non-compete clause and readily agreed. And it was at this juncture that our current program was born. We faced two immediate challengesone technological and the other related to student leadership and delegate recruitment (the people part of the puzzle). We initially gathered together a set of free technology platforms and programs, and began to integrate them together in what is now our OMUN universe. Initially, it was access to Learn Centrals free Blackboard Collaborate room and donated community management system, OrgSync, that started us out. I applied for, and won, a free 50 occupant room in a Learn Central competition in August 2011, and that Blackboard Collaborate online room became the pivotal component of our program. JZ experimented with various synchronous authoring programs before deciding on TitanPad to use for resolution hosting and writing. Through the generous donation by OrgSync founder and CEO, Eric Fortenberry, we secured access to a top notch system that would allow us to accept memberships, register delegates for debates, and house and manage student moderator applications. Additionally, OrgSyncs platform (which we now refer to as O-MUN) would allow us O-MUN is housed on OrgSync: to offer www.onlinemun.org (OrgSync) a free portal to any school wanting to create an online space for their MUN program. This, along with our desire to provide our Blackboard Collaborate room free of charge, created the two major components that allowed for replication on a large scale. As a new program feeling its way through the technological offerings that would best work for us, its important to stress how critical free acMUN makes heavy use of Facebook to message cess to programs was in our development, as out to delegates (Facebook) was the ease with which we could continuously

experiment. JZ was way ahead of me in every area of our technological advancements, earning him the nickname, among other things, Master of the Universe. In our case, it was certainly true that youth trumped experience in the rapid experimentation and acquisition of our technology needs, leaving me to do what I enjoyed mostorganizing and documenting the people aspect of the program, working closely with students on our social networking sites, developing curriculum, and creating the organizational structure needed to execute a global online program. While there were never serious setbacks in the fall of 2011, the recruitment of students to participate took tremendous effort and time. The delegates we laboriously recruited could not convince their Directors to take a second look at O-MUN. Finding the key students who could, in turn, recruit more students, was of utmost importance, unable as we were to tap into the vast MUN network of Directors. Two events helped propel us forward, however. In November 2011 I was given the wonderful opportunity to visit THIMUN Qatars inaugural conference. There I spent two days in Doha talking up the program and explaining the myriad opportunities it could provide schools and delegates. One schools dedicated advisor made good on his promise to promote online debates. When registration opened for our December debate, his students from Lahore American School stepped forward, and their advisor dutifully logged in for lobbying sessions and debate. The second critical influx of participants came from a virtual contact made with an MUN student leader at St. Josephs School Delegate preparation and discussion in Beirut, Lebanon. Joy Nasr worked diligently preparvia Facebook (Facebook) ing his classmates for online debates and brought forth another large pool of delegates to O-MUN. These waves of new delegates confirmed that both traditional, face-to-face networking and online outreach through social media could bring in the desired delegates. Today, just a mere five months after our initial O -MUN launch, our newest delegates are ones who have heard of us through friends or have simply found us through searching the Internet. Five months ago a Google search on O-MUN generated nothing. Now the hits come from Facebook and Twitter, blogs and our O-MUN website, linked in groups dedicated to online MUN, and even inspired YouTube videos with home grown talent advertisOur Blog: www.onlinemun.wordpress.com ing online debate, complete with a theme song. It took five months to generate the online presence (WordPress) so necessary for the program to take off. With solid traction, the program is now poised for rapid growth.

Human Capital and Expansion Technology aside, the greatest component of our recent success and our continued growth will be in the human development side of our program. Similar to large face-to-face conferences, the organizational demands placed on students to organize online debates is immense, and for those able to rise to the occasion, this provides unparalleled leadership opportunities. The integration of the necessary technology skills, as well as the development of a superior online presence are each valuable unto themselves. Taken together, however, they provide an extremely unique opportunity to integrate high level academic and leadership skills with technological skills and applications. Within O-MUNs global reach exists the added benefit of global, peer-to-peer collaboration, making O-MUN a unique academic program. Fundamental to our ability to grow has been the enhancement of a leadership structure that puts the emphasis squarely on the development of student leadership. Additionally, it has been an important priority to be able to grow down as O-MUN spreads. The leadership team, which is currently global in nature, has the ability to replicate itself at the regional, country, city and even school level. While O-MUN is working to establish partnerships with schools around the world, there is a committed effort to recruit and promote student leadership from schools and areas that do not have MUN programs. In keeping with our mission, we are then able to grow into regions that do not have a Model UN culture, and to reward students for initiating and spreading this program around the world. Conclusion I have several takeaways from my experience in developing a global, online educational program. The first is perhaps the most obvious. Technology has empowered teachers and students to innovate programs and solutions that meet real academic needs. Traditional barriers in the form of classroom walls to vast geographical distances are increasingly irrelevant, as our online MUN presence epitomizes the power of connecting the planets youth online. The second is that tried and true academic programs with access to technology can transform themselves into beautifully reincarnated and dynamic programs, with renewed relevance and dynamism breathed into them. Thirdly, student engagement can thrive if appropriate social media activity and leadership structures can be married to academic activities that are both engaging and relevant. And lastly, it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks! This one has surprised me the most. Having discovered a new universe of education innovation driven by teachers and embraced by their students, some of that joy and passion that carried me through my first years of teaching has returned. Connecting with those individuals able to contribute and facilitate online debates growth has been exhilarating, and only pales when compared to the sense of accomplishment I feel when I see OMUNs online classroom buzzing with discussionanalysis of the causes of endemic poverty, the role of sustainable development in emerging markets, the complexities of a major international crisis, and so much more. When I see a delegate from Singapore supporting a student from Somalia, or two students in Doha working collaboratively to provide debating and leadership opportunities for students, or a high school student in Tennessee mentoring an experienced MUN director many years her senior, I see academic collaboration and engagement at its best. It makes me believe that despite the very significant obstacles teachers face in todays test-driven, budget-constrained environment, it is ok to think and dream big, and to know that students will not only embrace these opportunities but assist in their development and expansion.