TECHNICAL APPENDIX A

GUIDELINES FOR AN ECOSYSTEM PROJECT REVIEW

The primary purpose of reviewing the proposed ecosystem project during the planning team's first formal meeting is to provide team members an overview on which they can begin to build common ideas, interpretations, and definitions. Suggested guidelines for preparing and presenting this review would include:

1. Keeping the review brief, certainly no more than 20 minutes--shorter if possible. (The sooner team members start taking part in the meeting, the sooner they will be able to begin working together.)

2. Highlighting what situations, data, perceptions, conditions, etc., initiated the idea to study the environment; what level and type of commitment has been given the project; and what the major goals for the study as represented by the team members are.

3. Discussing ecosystem theory. (This may be part of the project review or it may be left for later discussion. It is, however, a natural topic that will recur several times during a team's initial meetings. A key principle to remember when discussing ecosystem theory is that it addresses the environment as well as individuals by focusing upon the transactions that occur between people and their environment. In the past, student services have usually focused only on individuals, training them to cope with or helping them to adjust to their environments. The ecosystem model, by studying person-environment interactions, provides an important alternative--the adjustment or design of environments and aiding students to use these environments.)

4. Explaining the model's use of environmental referents. (This may also be part of the project review or postponed until it comes up in the natural course of discussion. The key principle to remember is that the environmental referent procedure goes beyond perceptions by asking the respondents to describe briefly what is happening to them in the environment that has produced their reaction to it. Analysis of these responses usually reveal common environmental referents which then can become targets for redesign.)

5. Stopping at appropriate intervals to get team members' questions and reactions, particularly if it seems necessary to have a lengthy project review. :