Dumbing Down to Smarten Up: Teaching Undergraduate Students Social Theory in the Age of TikTok

• In Event: Teaching and Learning Symposium Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 3: Navigating AI and Digital Literacy

Abstract

Fifty years since taking my first social theory class as an undergraduate student in the fall of 1976 and twenty years since teaching my first social theory class as a university professor in the spring of 2006, I can’t help but think about how much the landscape of teaching and learning social theory has changed over the past five decades in terms of course content, teaching tools, learning goals, assignments, expectations, aspirations, and applications. Focusing on just the past five years, I can’t help but think, as well, how much all of this has been accelerated by the explosion and intrusion of social media and AI. This is not meant as a lament. Times change. And good teachers and, for that matter, good students adapt to the changing times. For my ten-to-fifteen minute teaching and learning symposium roundtable presentation, I don’t plan to take a position as to which social theory teaching and learning modes and mediums are the best, then or now, but just to share my long journey as a student and as a teacher of social theory over the past fifty years; talk about what parts of my teaching social theory I’ve pared down and built up as a result of that journey to adapt to the changing times; and finally, to convey a few of my thoughts about how social theory can be and has always been used, then and now, to both affirm and disrupt the status quo depending on which status quos we are focusing on, along with providing my roundtable colleagues hard copies and online links to my most recent, Spring 2026, Social Theory course syllabus, teaching tools, learning goals, assignments, expectations, aspirations, applications, and favorite prompts.

Author

• Mark Rubinfeld, Westminster University