Our institutes are where we train and help faculty and staff develop their social action course syllabus or workshop series that engages students in defining and leading policy change campaigns. Currently, there is no registration fee for these Institutes. In return, we ask that attendees commit to the following:
- 1) Prepare for the Institute on Teaching Social Action by reading selected books and companion guide.
- 2) Integrate social action into a course in the next 18 months.
- 3) Complete a Post-Institute Feedback and Status Survey
- 4) Email us your final syllabus prior to teaching your social action course.
- 5) Complete an Early Semester Social Action Course Survey.
- 6) Encourage at least one representative from each of your student campaigns to present at the National College Summit on Social Action.
- 7) Complete an End-of-Semester Social Action Course Survey.
1) Prepare for the Institute on Teaching Social Action by reading selected books and companion guide.
We ask all attendees to prepare for the Institute by reading:
- CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action (2nd edition)
- CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action
- CHANGE! Companion Guide for Teaching Social Action which includes video clips of Scott speaking about the various topics in each chapter of the faculty guide.
Reading these two books and watching the "mini-lectures" in the Companion Guide allows us to make the Institute much more interactive, with you and the other participants grappling with the challenges of doing a social action course rather than just being taught the material. In addition, the Companion Guide includes all of the articles, in-class videos, and portfolios that Scott used in his social action course, and a Case Study of one student campaign, so you see how the resources are used by the students.
2) Integrate social action into a course in the next 18 months.
The approach to teaching social action we are preparing you to teach is an experiential learning model where students develop and launch policy-change campaigns of their choosing as part of a course. The student campaigns seek to change a policy (i.e., a rule, law, regulation, norm, or practice of an institution) on campus or in the community.
In this social action model, students must engage in:
- issue development (i.e., developing demands and a target),
- building power,
- tactics, and
- campaign launch & implementation.
If student teams do these four core activities, we have found that it allows for social action to take place, (i.e., where students work on campaigns to enact a policy change on campus or in the community by making demands of a target or decision-maker).
3) Complete a Post-Institute Feedback and Status Survey
Immediately after the Institute, we will invite you to complete a short survey to share your thoughts on what worked, what could be improved, and how we might expand the pool of faculty and staff teaching social action.
We have used feedback from prior participants to make significant improvements in the design and delivery of the Institutes on Teaching Social Action. This is vitally important if we are to achieve our goal of mainstreaming the teaching of social action using an experiential learning model.
Link to survey Feedback Survey form — https://forms.gle/cSFGoLtMP8jTupyp7
In addition, we will invite you to let us know what progress you are making on drafting your syllabus, and confirm when you anticipate teaching your social action course.
This survey allows us to keep track of who is teaching social action when. This will help build our community of practice by allowing us to connect you to colleagues with similar interests or who teach near you.
Link to Course Survey form — https://forms.gle/KHt6ZQuXriVKVscz9
4) Email us your final syllabus prior to teaching your social action course.
Ideally, we would like to receive your final syllabus at least two weeks before you teach social action. We will add it to our social action course database, where interested faculty and staff can see how others in the field are structuring their social action courses.
Please email your course syllabus to Scott Myers-Lipton at smlipton@sjsu.com.
We will also provide an option for you to upload your syllabus directly to the Social Action Courses database.
5) Complete an Early Semester Social Action Course Survey.
Four weeks after your social action class begins, we invite you to fill out a survey informing us of your student teams’ demands and targets. We also ask how you feel your course is going.
This information will give us the opportunity to help you connect your student teams with students on other campuses whose campaigns are addressing similar issues.
Link to survey form: https://forms.gle/6WhNaNkP5umtk9Eu8
6) Encourage at least one representative from each of your student campaigns to present at the National College Summit on Social Action.
Near the end of the Fall and Spring semesters, we organize a virtual Summit on College Social Action. These are a great opportunity for your students to get a sense of how they are part of a national movement.
7) Complete an End-of-Semester Social Action Course Survey.
Two weeks after the class is finished, fill out an end-of-semester survey on your social action class. This survey will ask for more information on your student campaigns, including what type of campaign actions took place and where the campaigns stood at the end of the semester.
We will document this information in the Student Campaigns database. This will provide inspiration to other students, as well as faculty and staff, who are seeking to make a positive change in the world.
Link to survey form — https://forms.gle/i49VEy4FFt4LyGja6