Introduction
Chapter 1 — Social Action: An Overview
Social Action and Its Role on Colleges
Chapter 2 — Developing a Social Action Class
Course vs Co-Curricular & Prerequisites
Creating a Social Action Syllabus
Teaching Style & Classroom Norms
Role of Place & Each Semester v Every Year
Chapter 3 — Teaching Social Action (TSA) Model
Chapter 4 — Where Do We Go From Here?
Introduction
If you know you will be using social action in an existing course that is already on the books, your biggest challenge with be that one-half of the previous course material and course time will have to be removed and replaced with social action (e.g., issue development, building power, tactics, and campaign launch & implementation). What course material is most essential for you to keep?
Another way to get a social action course on the books in a timely manner is to do a “minor curriculum change.” This is what Scott did. In the Spring of 2006, he started teaching social action in the Department of Sociology, and he used an existing course number that was already in the course catalog but was no longer being taught by the department. At that time, Soci. 164 was a class entitled “Small Group Dynamics” and it hadn’t been taught in years, so while it was on the books, it was essentially an untaught class. Scott decided to take this underutilized course and make a minor curriculum change to it. To make this minor change, he kept the same course number, but changed the language describing the course. He would still teach about small group dynamics but in a new way, where students would have the ability to use small group dynamics (i.e., facilitation, consensus decision-making, and group interaction) and apply it to changing a policy that the students wanted to enact. He made this alteration to a “minor curriculum change” form, and turned it into the Curriculum Committee, and the request was approved within the month. Importantly, since it was a minor curriculum change, the request did not need to go through a lengthy process with committee, which saved him valuable time as he could teach the course in the following semester. If Scott had decided to create a brand-new class, then the process might have taken 1-2 years. He didn’t want to wait that long, so this path greatly expedited the process.
Prerequisites
You will need to consider if your social action course needs to have any prerequisites. Scott’s social action course was an upper division course, but he granted entry to a 1st year student if he felt that they could handle the material, as he wanted to include all students who were interested.
The Teaching Social Action community has had several good discussions on whether a social action course should be at the beginning of a students academic career or near the end. Some feel that students get the most out of it if they have three more years to apply their learning on campus, while others feel that it is better for upper division students to take a social action course, as they have more knowledge of the campus and society.
Question:
What prerequisites will your class have, if any?
Continue to Creating a Social Action Syllabus