Imagine that you could just reach over and open a 'how to' reference guide for making the world a better place. That's what Dr.s Guy and Heidi Burgess had in mind when they requested ASSETT Development Award funding for their Make a Difference Guide for their Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS) students. The Burgesses created the Make a Difference Guide as a multi-threaded textbook for students to, "... Understand the big picture of the conflict situation and identify areas in which they might be able to make a positive difference." Guy Burgess explains that there is no need to "reinvent the wheel," when there has already been research done on topics of conflicts and theories of resolution. Burgess acknowledges that the everyday person encounters some kind of conflict that they may wish to resolve: "Conflict is something that everyone's involved in, and these materials [that the Make a Difference Guide references] should be accessible to lots of people."
The Make a Difference Guide links to the Beyond Intractability database that the Burgesses have spent years creating. With funding from the Hewlitt Foundation, the Burgesses have linked to up to 30,000 scholarly articles regarding peace and conflict studies. However, the Burgesses want to increase access to and awareness about the resources available through Beyond Intractability, and last year, when they obtained the ASSETT Development Award funding, the Burgesses wrote the content for the Make a Difference Guide, which serves as a navigation tool for the information that the Beyond Intractability website offers. "For hundreds of topics, the system then provides access to a range of resources, including encyclopedic articles on each topic, recommended readings and more comprehensive lists of potentially useful resources. These resources are arranged on 'virtual bookshelves' ..." the Burgesses said. Visit the Make a Difference Guide, and click on a topic folder that interests you--conflict assessment, poor government, etc. You'll find more specific subgroups of topics, each with icons that link to more specific scholarly articles, current events, and audio interviews about those topics.
The multi-threaded Make a Difference Guide is most useful for students who are enrolled in the PACS Senior Seminar course PACS 4500. These students need to access both general information about conflict and resolution, as well as specific research about topics of their choice, in order to write their senior research papers. Students may come to the PACS 4500 Senior Seminar course with a wide range of worldwide interests, including Sub Saharan African failed states, how to adapt to climate change, or U.S. domestic policy disputes. Consequently, the Burgesses saw a need for a common textbook that covers many different types of conflict and resolution. Indeed, the Make a Difference Guide has seemed to contribute positively to the seniors' final projects: "The quality of the projects improved," Guy Burgess observed. The PACS 4500 senior seminar course and PACS 2500 Introduction to Peace and Conflict Studies course are together a large part of the requirements that are necessary for students who are interested in earning a PACS certificate in addition to their undergraduate degrees.
Currently, the Burgesses are using funds from other grants to refine and improve the Make a Difference site and integrate students' feedback. Guy Burgess says, "We want to build a computer system that emulates an interview [with a conflict mediation expert] to help think through conflict." However, maintaining the websites remains an expensive endeavor, especially since the Beyond Intractability site references so much information. The Burgesses gladly accept donations to main the sites.
Guy Burgess points out that although we may hear more often about violent conflicts than about peaceful resolutions, that doesn't mean that resolutions are not happening, as well: "The popular media makes [conflict] seem hopeless, but it isn't. The trick is to make [resolution] visible."
