week 1

Week 1

Instructions

Upon completing your readings for this week, reflect upon the variety of communities to which you belong. As you perform your daily activities, keep notes on all the places you visit and how they are located in your surroundings and involve your daily activities. Consider your virtual communities as well (Facebook friends, Twitter feeds, Group membership in listserves, etc.). Think how such membership in a community affects your daily life. How often do you read or contribute to a group? How do you think such contributions/memberships affect you? Also, consider journaling as an added activity to this course. This activity helps enhance your reflective abilities and helps to improve your personal and professional insight.

Using Microsoft Word, create a Venn Hierarchy diagram (Go to Insert, Smart Art, then select Relationship, which will give you a variety of shapes to work with to create your community hierarchy) that illustrates the various communities to which you belong. Your illustration should include the following:

Microsystems include nuclear and extended families and friendships.

Organizations might include university, student organizations or teams, places of worship, and workplaces.

Localities include neighborhoods, rural areas, towns, and cities.

Next, illustrate the macrosystems that might influence your life. These can include global economic trends, corporate and government decisions, belief systems, advertising, mass media, and cultural forces.

After you have assessed how community affects your life, analyze the following:

Document your definition of an ideal community.

Explore how it would enable a good life for individuals and families.

Describe the organizations that would exist in this community, and then explain why.

Analyze the core values of this community.

Support your assignment with at least five peer-reviewed research articles published in the past 5 years. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources, including seminal articles, may be included.

Total Length: 3-4 pages, not including title and reference pages