Semester Reflection on ISIS

Throughout this semester, my group and I followed the development of ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. We began the semester with a brief general overview of ISIS which described who they are, how they developed, what their goals/ideologies are, and why they are having such a large impact on the international community. We then discussed women's roles in ISIS and analyzed why women from all over the world are moving to join ISIS in their terror. Our next post focused on how ISIS seized oil refineries from Iraq and Syria, then used them as their main source of income. Our most recent post describes the three most prominent terror tactics used by ISIS: propaganda, kidnapping, and the use of social media to extend their message across international borders. Our blog posts followed the development of ISIS in regard to what was most heavily focused upon during that week.

As a group, we proposed and discussed multiple ideas for each blog post. We checked to see which topic was the most relevant and then proceeded to continue the research on whatever was decided to be the most interesting/immediate. We assigned two people to each of the 3 sets of questions outlined in the directions. One person would write the summary and their partner would write the analysis. This was an attempt to ensure that everyone had an equal amount of work, but also access to other people's research. This made it much easier to produce a cohesive, flowing blog. At any given moment, we had at least two people editing and revising our posts.

Throughout the development of these blog posts, I learned more about ISIS than I probably would have without the posts. I realized that our media is much more sensationalized that I initially thought, especially in comparison to the media of other countries, specifically Germany and the UK. To me, it was interesting to see how different the coverage was of the same topic in different regions. I learned a lot about women in ISIS, which prompted me to sign up for the "Islamic Feminist Ethics" course next semester. I also learned about how to effectively work in a group: it's important to delegate assignments and resources far enough in advance to ensure that everyone will have adequate time to work on it with respect to their personal schedules. It was an enjoyable and enriching semester reporting on ISIS with such a great group of students!