Multidisciplinarity and meaning in labs: Combining cultural sociology and data science to enhance undergraduate experiences

• In Event: Sociology and Critical Data Literacy in a Changing Knowledge Eco-system

Abstract

The current landscape of undergraduate learning is characterized by fast-moving technical change that challenges traditional methods of scientific learning and social research. The end of the long 20th century witnessed the advent of the internet and world wide web, followed quickly by the rise of social media platforms and algorithmic cultures, the rapid datafication of social life, the amplification of actuarial social logics, the spread of machine learning and the introduction of large language models and generative AI which have quickly become a ubiquitous feature of social life. Education is a crucial institutional setting in which all these changes have been framed and reframed. A new knowledge eco-system has developed on campus, presenting both challenges and opportunities for Sociology. We think the sociological imagination can be a critical resource for teaching and learning in this environment. In this paper we describe our experiences with a multidisciplinary, multi-method sociology lab where students develop identities as researchers in this new landscape for scientific research: the mhc metrics lab. Our lab culture is grounded in a historical perspective to contextualize knowledge and we aim to model an approach to social research that links individual challenges with larger social structures to understand social change. We conclude with an invitation to colleagues within and outside sociology to include a critical social science perspective as a way to preserve epistemic integrity as the power of our technical tools expand.

Authors

• Ben Hidru Gebre-Medhin, Mount Holyoke College

• Eleanor Townsley, Mount Holyoke College