NRE 677.054

2CR

Instructor - Prof. Rachel Kaplan

TTh 2-4pm

The Seminar explores a diverse range of environmental situations from the perspective of the Reasonable Person Model (RPM) -- a framework that examines ways that contexts and environments can help bring out the best in people. Whether personal or in a group, local or global, information plays a central role in making sense of things and meeting challenges.  Information is thus the necessity, joy, and bane of our lives. RPM views information in terms of three interrelated necessities: to gain knowledge, be competent, and make a difference.

Many challenges we face individually and collectively are closely related to difficulties in achieving clarity. While this may be due to a lack of information, frequently it is a result of an abundance of it. The needed information may well be available, but finding it in a way that is understandable and usable is daunting.

The purpose of communication is to exchange information.  Such exchanges, however, often fail to achieve their goals. So often, all of us as information providers neglect to attend to the needs of the intended recipients. These are not trivial failures; they speak directly to the ways people develop and use their mental models and to the interrelated necessities that are at the core of RPM.

Goals:

The seminar combines a number of goals:

• Use of a psychological framework to examine a wide range of environmental topics
• Consideration of a variety of modes of environmental communication from a cognitive perspective
• Develop or reframe an application area of the student’s choice using the RPM framework
• A unique opportunity to learn from and provide suggestions for a forthcoming book.

The seminar is built around draft chapters for a forthcoming book that considers RPM in the context of far-ranging applications. The chapter authors will be participating (in person or virtually) during the session when their work is discussed.