The Yegiora Files

Over the years, the call for doing more practical activities outside of the classroom has increased at the tertiary level of education. A good number of students have developed the view that talking and reading about theories does not give them a practical sense of how the various theories are applied in the real world.  Students have formally through the online unit evaluation mentioned the need for more practical placements, internship programs and excursions. For example, a student who evaluated a unit of mine said; "Theories would be much better and understandable if engaged with practical part of it" . Another said; "Knowledge without practical is useless" . The Graduate Tracer Study 2020 Formal Report also shared similar views by former students. A male participant said the University should; "Encourage practical learning for students and work placements for students in the work place" . A female participant said; "Engage students practically i...

In this blog, I will briefly discuss the second teaching and learning strategy I used to teach a full-time undergraduate unit fully online in the second semester due to the COVID19 pandemic. In the first semester, I used the student-led seminar strategy as mentioned in my previous blog. In the second semester, I used a traditional strategy but infused again the usage of Zoom. For the unit IR409 Foreign Policy in PNG offered in the second semester, instead of the traditional face-to-face lectures and tutorial discussions, I decided to organize 2 different online webinar series. One series featured practitioners in the the area of foreign policy while the other featured the students. This formed the synchronous part of the unit.  We do not have a lot of books or journal articles written about our foreign policy or international relations. Many of the publications are out of date or not useful for students who want to know what the government is doing currently. As such, I have n...

In this blog article, I will share with you a snippet of my emergency remote teaching and learning experience. I have been experimenting with the blended learning approach for over 5 years, the move to delivering fully online a full-time undergraduate unit was a new and interesting experiment. I will continue my experiment in order to determine which online teaching and learning strategy is effective.  Apart from the traditional classroom lectures and tutorials, academic staff members have been using Moodle as a learning management system to share documents on our unit webpages using the resource modules, submit assessments via the various activity modules, and collate assessments using the Gradebook function. This fusion is an integral part of the blended learning approach. I teach a maximum of 3 full-time undergraduate units per semester with a class population of between 30 to 40 students for each unit. That means a total of between 95 to 120 students per semester. The 3 units...

Foreign policy has many definitions. There are common elements that feature in all of the definitions. It is important to identify these common elements in order to develop a good understanding of the concept.  The common elements in many of the definitions of foreign policy that I have read are: national interest state actors non-state actors interaction international system  A diagram showing the common elements Britannica includes the common elements of 'state' and 'interaction' in their definition. Foreign policy is made up of "general objectives that guide the activities and relationships of one state in its interactions with other states". The definition from Merriam-Webster is similar: "the policy of a sovereign state in its interaction with other sovereign states".  The word foreign is defined by WordWeb as: "of concern to or concerning the affairs of other nations other then your own". Policy is defined as: "a line of argum...

What is classical realism? According to Elman (2007), the main assumption in the theory of classical realism is that the desire for power is rooted in the flawed nature of humanity, which causes states to continuously engage in a struggle to increase their capabilities. He said the absence of the international equivalent of a state's government is a permissive condition that gives human appetite free reign.  The notion of 'flawed nature' comes from the work of Thomas Hobbes; he said human beings by nature are brutish and egoistic. It is in our nature to pursue our own interest before the interest of others. We are capable of doing anything in order to achieve the outcomes we want. To further understand the notion, we look at the four universal conditions mentioned by Thomas Hobbes: Equality of power - all people are roughly equal in strength and intelligence. No single person is so smart or powerful that they cannot be defeated or outwitted by someone else. Equality of need...

Technology is increasingly becoming an important part of human life. Most of what we do today is influenced by our use of technology. As a developing country, PNG is seeing changes unfold caused by the technological revolution with the help of China.  Many people now are slowly depending on their computers or smart phones to help them do things for their survival. One can access their bank account to transfer money from one account to another using their smart phone with access to the internet. There is no need to walk physically to the bank to manually fill in a withdrawal and deposit form. In addition, one does not need to stand in a long line to complete the transaction.  COVID-19 is now seen as a catalyst for the technological revolution. The fear that we might expose ourselves to the virus if we come into close contact with others is changing human perception and behaviour. We now want to find out how best we can use technology to do some of the things that we do as human...