The ICNC Online Courses Curriculum Fellowship offers a grant of $1,300 for instructors to develop and teach an online course or curriculum unit on civil resistance.

Applicants for ICNC’s online curriculum fellowship are expected to develop either:

• a full-term online course on civil resistance
  OR
• a curriculum unit on civil resistance that, at minimum, consists of 5 weekly online sessions on civil resistance in which participants are asked to review relevant session notes, videos, and readings and then engage in forum discussions moderated by a seminar instructor.

Fellows will be expected to set up and offer their online teaching on civil resistance through the ICNC Online Course platform unless this would violate your institution’s policies.

The ICNC Online Courses Curriculum Fellowship offers a grant of $1,300 for fellows to:

• develop and teach a full term course on civil resistance
  OR
• develop and teach an online curriculum unit on civil resistance that consists of at least 5 weeks of content.

The proposed curriculum can be offered to students and interested learners from applicant’s university, town, district, country, region. Unless it violates institutional policies, the online course or unit would be given through ICNC’s online course platform.

In addition to the curriculum fellowship grant, awardees will receive ICNC staff consultation on curriculum planning, as well as a package with academic books and documentaries on civil resistance. ICNC provides these resources free of charge as part of its curriculum fellowship package to help its fellows develop the content on and teach civil resistance.

Fellowship Length

2020-21 ICNC Curriculum Fellows are expected to teach their courses either in Fall 2020 or Winter or Spring 2021 (according to northern hemisphere seasons).

Stipend Distribution

The fellowship grants will be disbursed in two equal installments. If a teaching team is granted the fellowship, they will split the grant of $1,300 between themselves.

1. The first installment will be made after the course begins, the student enrollment is confirmed and the syllabus with a civil resistance component has been satisfactorily reviewed by ICNC.
2. The second installment will be made after the classroom-based course ends and ICNC receives fellow’s final report and results of students’ evaluations pertaining to their learning on civil resistance and course assessment.

As part of the fellowship it is expected that:

a.    Once selected, the fellow will be expected to develop an online seminar, though customized to fit their own teaching environment, learning objectives and audience. The seminar must consist of a minimum of 5 weekly online sessions on civil resistance.

b.    Limited technical assistance from ICNC will be available to help fellows learn basic functionality of the ICNC Online Courses platform to be able to build their own courses. ICNC will provide fellows with an instructors guide.

c.    fellow is expected to develop original content for and run an online seminar

d.    proposal for the online seminar will, at minimum, include teachable content (such as audio/videos, readings, exercises, forum discussions) on:

• what civil resistance is and what are the prevailing misconceptions concerning civil resistance

• historical record and effectiveness of civil resistance

• strategies and tactics of civil resistance

• dynamics of civil resistance including but not limited to the phenomenon of backfire, defections, movement mobilization, sustainability and/or tactical innovation and sequencing

e.   fellow moderates the course online in its different forums where learners comment on the materials reviewed and exchange ideas about specific topics and respond to moderator’s questions.

f.    fellow interacts with learners via regular, live video-conferencing and creative online content (e.g. case studies/exercises) to ensure learners’ active engagement and to reduce attrition from the online course once it begins

g.    no less than 10 and no more than 20 students per fellow are actively engaged throughout the online seminar to ensure effective course moderation and supervision

h.    materials on civil resistance that a fellow selects, develops and uploads into online seminar can be in language other than English (check recommended resources) though the initial curriculum proposal for ICNC consideration must be in English

i.    forum conversations and moderation can be conducted in a language other than English

j.    fellow prepares and shares with ICNC bi-weekly English-language reports on the progress of the online seminar, including participants’ interactions in discussion forums and their work on seminar assignments

k.    fellow is encouraged to arrange an online guest speaker who will present on a selected topic on civil resistance

Review Instruments (l, m, o)

l.    fellow develops online evaluation instrument to be used to assess progress in students’ learning about civil resistance:

• template of a pre-seminar learning gains survey (distributed prior to the start of the seminar)

• template of a post-seminar learning gains survey (distributed at the end of the seminar)

m.    fellow develops online final course evaluation to solicit students’ feedback on the course content on civil resistance

• template of a final course evaluation

n.  fellow submits a final report to ICNC soon after the course or curriculum unit ends. The report will summarize content on civil resistance delivered, including any innovative teaching tools used, completed assignments, aggregate results from the students’ learning gains surveys, results from the final evaluation and general lessons learnt

o. fellow develops online follow-up survey for students to complete 3 months after the course ends. The fellow is responsible for sending the follow-up survey to their students.

• template of the 3 month follow-up survey

In developing the curriculum proposal for a classroom-based course or unit on civil resistance, applicants are strongly encouraged to  consider integrating elements of the following resources:

• ICNC Online Academic Curriculum

• People Power: The Game of Civil Resistance

• ICNC conflict summaries on civil resistance

• ICNC educational resources

• ICNC translations: if a proposed course is taught in a language different than English, a fellow will be expected to incorporate translations of civil resistance literature available in the ICNC library, which houses materials on civil resistance in more than 60 languages

• A Force More Powerful, 2000 documentary

• Bringing Down a Dictator, 2001 documentary

• Orange Revolution, 2007 documentary

• Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan, Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011)

• Maciej Bartkowski, ed. Recovering Nonviolent History. Civil Resistance in Liberation Struggles (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013)

• Peter Ackerman, and Jack DuVall, A Force More Powerful: A Century of Nonviolent Conflict (New York: Macmillan, 2000)

• Shaazka Beyerle, Curtailing Corruption: People Power for Accountability and Justice (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2014)

• Veronique Dudouet, ed. Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation: Transition from Armed to Nonviolent Struggle (London: Routledge, 2015)

• A Diplomat’s Handbook for Democracy Development Support

Check also Selected Bibliography on Civil Resistance (2016) 

Applicants’ curriculum proposal – to be submitted as part of the application process – is expected to include a list of resources on civil resistance that an applicant plans to incorporate into a classroom-based  and identify a potential guest speaker suitable for a proposed civil resistance topic.

The application window is now closed. Please visit our current calls page for future opportunities.

In addition to the hybrid fellowship, ICNC also offers a curriculum fellowship for classroom-based and hybrid courses.

To learn more about the classroom-based curriculum fellowship, please click here.

To learn more about the hybrid (classroom and online) curriculum fellowship, please click here.