Students as Partners in a Large Enrollment Social Problems Class

• In Event: 20461 - Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 6: Teaching Ideas

Abstract

Each year, I gain more distance from my students in age, interests, and experience thinking sociologically. Faced with a class of 500 undergraduates new to the field each semester, I determined that I needed help keeping my Social Problems class as relevant as possible to the lived experiences and interests of my students. I was missing important context, words, and generational understandings of social structure to help my students grasp the relevance of some sociological concepts. The world, and undergraduate life specifically, have changed enough since I earned my bachelor’s in the aughts that I could tell how out-of-touch I was in some areas and felt that it was bringing down my teaching efficacy. This large-enrollment class pulls together students from across our STEM-heavy university as they work through their general education requirements. It is harder to connect with this large group as they dedicate their study time to labs connected to their major and quickly come in and out of the lecture hall as they move to their next classes. I joined the pilot cohort of Purdue University’s Student Pedagogy Advocates (SPA) program in Spring 2024. My co-presenter and I worked together before, throughout, and after the semester to review my materials, reflect on how students are connecting with it, and revise assignments and activities to make them more effective for the students currently in the room. My SPA, Annette, and I will share our experience of working together, how it resulted in a stronger Social Problems class, and what we both gained from the partnership. We feel that other students and instructors could work together in similar ways to navigate the quickly changing cultural and technological landscape to help make our teaching and learning environments as effective as possible.

Authors

• Lindsay Hamm, Purdue University

• Annette Tan, Purdue University