Introduction
Chapter 1 — Overview
A — Social Action's Role in U.S. Experiment in Democracy B — US College Social Action C — Benefits of Social Action for Students Campuses, and Society D — The Vision: Bringing Social Action into the Classroom E — Overcoming Challenges of Teaching Social Action
Chapter 2 — Developing a Social Action Class
A — Academic Course vs Co-Curricular & B — Prerequisites C — Creating a Social Action Syllabus D — Teaching Style & E — Classroom Norms F — The Students G — Building Campus Allies and Community Partners H —The Role of Place & I —Each Semester vs Every Year (or Other Year) J — Maintaining Momentum
Chapter 3 — Launching Student Campaigns
A — On Your Mark: Preparing Students for the Road Ahead B — Go! Students Choose Their Issue C — Get Set: Setting the Tone D — Change Theory E — Building Power F — Social Action Campus Tour G — Research: Historical Overview, Power Mapping, & Target Analysis H — Group Dynamics I — Strategy & Tactics J — Campaign Kickoff
Chapter 4 — Campaign Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation
A — Timeline & Campaign Plan B — Campaign Implementation: "Series of Actions" Begins C — Campaign Execution & Case Studies D — Campaign Evaluation E — Day of the Final: Campaign Notebook & Group Presentation
Chapter 5 — Where to Go From Here
A — Next Semester B — Mainstreaming Social Action C — Social Action Internship Program D — Pipeline to Jobs & Graduate School E — Status of Current Campaigns F — Impact of Social Action on Former Social Action Students
Faculty View
A key role for faculty is to help keep the students on track with their campaign activities and actions. Below are two methods for doing this with online tools that provide a place for students to respond to specific group assignments documenting the progress of their campaign developments.
Mural Board
Mural Board is an effective way to organize the multitude of activities that the student are involved with, as well as to provide them with real time feedback. Scott describes his use of the Mural Board as follows:
In Sociology 164: Social Action, I look at our Mural Board both mid-week and on the weekend, which allows me to continually provide feedback to the students, and not to lose time between classes. In the past, I would have to wait until the following class to see if the students had made progress on their campaign activities. With the Mural Board, or some other board app, you can see if the students are making progress, or not, with their campaign activities in real time. In light of having only 15-16 weeks maximum to do a social action campaign, the Mural Board has made it possible for all campaigns in Sociology 164: Social Action for the past several years to at least do one campaign action a semester.
You can view Scott’s Spring ‘23 course implementation using Mural Board here.
You can use a course template Mural Board we have created modeled on Scott’s by following these directions (or follow the short video below):
- Once you have a Mural Board account, open the template using the link.
- Use command + a to select all of the items on this one.
- Use command + c to copy them.
- Open up your own Mural Board and use command + v to paste them into yours.
Notion
Notion is a single space where you can think, write, and plan. It essentially functions as a personalized digital workspace for note-taking, project management, and knowledge management, all within a customizable interface.
It is a great way to manage campaigns, build a culture of accountability, and check on student progress. Students manage their campaigns through the classes “campaign board” which has their portfolio details included and a working campaign binder for each group.
The campaign binders is where the students document the work and show their progress on key deliverables. It also makes it easer to “turn in” the binder at the end of the class. The campaign board and the binder pages can all easily turn into an active webpage easily in notion. So students can create a web presence quickly.
