Open Pedagogy Project                      Introduction to Sociology – Fall 2020            Dr. Parker

Sociological Topic: The Social Construction of Power

Purpose and Relevance: This assignment is designed to allow students to take a deeper dive into the topic of power at a number of different levels. Power is obviously a salient aspect of their lives, particularly at the confluence of the pandemic and the social justice rebellion we are going through.

Focus Questions: 1. “Where does Power Lie?” (The double entendre will probably go over most students heads initially but will hopefully make sense when we go back to it during reflection)

                            2. What makes some forms of power legitimate and others not?

Assessment:

   Pre-Test: During the first week of the semester students will complete an online survey

consisting of the following questions in randomized order.

Survey: In each of the following situations describe anything that looks like power to you, and

briefly explain how the power works.

1. A group of protestors pull down a statue of Christopher Columbus claiming that he committed “crimes against humanity” by starting the genocide of Native Americans.
2. A police officer stops a group of Black and Hispanic youths who are walking loudly along a major street after school and asks them for their ID’s.
3. A nurse at the emergency room of a hospital explains to the injured person that has just entered that they have to show her their insurance card and ID before they can see a doctor.
4. A parent explains to her 5 year-old who is upset, that he has to hold her hand while they cross the street.
5. The State Board of Education selects textbooks for all of the public schools in the state which do not include an information about evolution, racism or socialism.
6. A minority ethnic group within a country has been campaigning for many years to get better treatment and more resources from the government. A small group of them have decided to start an armed resistance against the government and have begun to blow up train stations and other government buildings. The government has responded by sending in the military to impose a curfew, burn houses of suspected militants and round up hundreds of young men.
7. A jury decides to convict a young man for murder and give him the death sentence.
8. The manager of a factory decides to lay off 300 of the 600 workers at the factory because the economy has taken a downturn and demand for their products has declined.
9. A husband, who is unemployed breaks into a drug store to steal an expensive drug that his wife desperately needs, but which he cannot afford. He is caught and put in jail.
10. A sociologist conducts a research study and finds that young people between the ages of 17 – 24 from three neighborhoods in the city are 3 times more likely to be convicted of a crime and sent to prison than the young people from the city’s 7 other neighborhoods.
11.  A social media app tracks your location, who you call, the websites you visit and your purchases. Another corporation buys your information from the owners of the app.

Process: During Week 4 of the semester students are introduced to the project, which will constitute 30% of their overall course grade.

Assignment Introduction. This assignment will help you grow your skills as a sociologist. It will give you the opportunity to develop a question, collect and analyze data, draw conclusions from your data and communicate with an audience of your choice about your findings. You probably have not done this type of work before, but you can do this. And my hope is that by the end you will find it is actually fun, as well as interesting.

1. Introductory video/presentation

• Small group brainstorm –   1. What is Power? Group definition.

2. Where can we look to see Power?

• Hand out project description.

In this project you will explore the idea of power and the various ways that it is socially constructed. You will be asked to gather data, make sense of that data, draw conclusions from that data that you and put those conclusions in a form that you will be proud to share publicly.

The first step will be to form an affinity/research group. This is where you will brainstorm ideas, share resources and develop a research plan.

Step 1: Where do you see power? What interests you about the idea of power? (domain, relationship, topic etc.)

Step 2: Data collection. How can you move beyond your own opinion? Based on what you came up with in Step 1 – think about where you might collect some data – statistics, a survey, observations.

Step 3: Actually, collect the data and see what it tells you.

Step 4: Communicate your findings. What audience might share your interest in this topic? What is the best way to communicate with them?

Step 5. Reflect on what you have learned.

You will submit your responses for each of these steps on TurnitIn on Blackboard, where I will provide comments. We will also be discussing this project in our weekly Zoom sessions throughout the semester.

Open Pedagogy Project          Urban Sociology         Fall 2020         Dr. Parker        KCC

Backward Design of Open Pedagogy Project for Urban Sociology – Fall 2020

1. Where do we want to go?

Outcomes: Through engaging in this learning experience students will demonstrate:

1. The impact of data collection choices on a research question and vice versa.
2. The social construction of identity and its relation to human action.
3. The features and dynamics of collective action.

• What do we need to get us there?

1. The Collective Action Model
   1. The Role Power Diagram
   1. Overview of problem of Police killings of unarmed Black people.
   1. Short history of BLM movement from Ferguson 2014 to now.
   1. Videos: Trevor Noah, Killer Mike

Overview:

This project will facilitate student exploration of a central sociological topic: Collective Action. The exploration will be rooted in the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across the country and the globe. The specific question to be explored will be “Why do people choose or not choose to participate in a collective physical protests?”

Place in the Course:

The project will be introduced as part of Module 3 in the course. Precedes Module 1: Introduction and Module 2: George Floyd: Why this death, at this moment, in this place?

Preparation Steps:

1. Introductory presentation with video clips about the protests.
2. Small group brainstorm: what different groups and behaviors do you see in the various protests? Make a list and then discuss why you think these different groups are there.
3. Review examples of pundits theories regarding the same question.
   1. Summarize three different perspectives related to BLM protests with citations on Discussion Board.
4. Debrief – list and discuss groups and their reasons.
5. Brief presentation of the Collective Action Model (CAM).
   1. Apply the CAM to an example of a BLM-related event
6. Methodology: how do we know what think we know? Examine our mental model/p-prim: “behavior is the result of motivation and intention.”
7. Sociology – “systems influence behavior”  How do we explore this question of why people did or did not participate?

Assignment:

Group –

1. Select a strategy (interview and/or survey), generate a list of questions and develop a participant recruitment strategy.
2. Collect data and create an appropriate data repository (i.e. Google docs, excel spreadsheet)

Individual – Analysis and conclusions.

1. Working paper – 2 – 3 page, informal analysis paper that summarizes key aspects of the data, connections to particular conclusions and the answer to the question – why does this matter?
2. Choose at least one public site – blog, website, etc and write a response to a contrasting opinion/conclusion or an extension and expansion of an opinion that you are in general agreement with. Publish your contribution and submit the link, along with a copy to Blackboard.

• How will we know when we have arrived?

Assessment:

  Assignment Rubric

	Novice	Emerging	Proficient
Working Paper
Social Construction			Student can describe the processes by which identities are socially constructed through the interplay between individual choices and social forces.
Collective Action			Student can the three features of the CAM to a particular instance or ongoing organization of a group of people.
Data-Conclusion        Connection			There is a strong, explicit logical connection between the data reported and the conclusions drawn.
Implications			The student can identify and describe two or more implications of their analysis for other issues or situations outside the boundaries of the study.
Public Contribution
Audience/Voice			The writing displays a tone and style appropriate for the intended audience based on other responses in the thread or string.
Argument			The writing clearly and succinctly uses data and/or arguments that support the intended position.
Implications			The writing identifies at least two implications of the argument that either refute or extend that suggested by other authors in the string or thread.

  Student reflection

            Each student will prepare a 1 – 2 page reflection on what they learned from this project, which they will post on TurnitIn in peer review mode so that they can read each other’s reflections.

Hi all. Finally coming out of tenure crisis coma here. Falling behind has been an interesting reminder of where many of our students are coming from. Lol. As I fell behind I could feel the pressure of being overwhelmed by new material I hadn’t had a chance to properly digest step by step. So I decided to focus on one thing, the “From OER to Open Pedagogy: Harnessing the Power of Open” article, which seemed very substantive and something I could sink my teeth into. 

I like a lot of the questions they raise. They are selling the possibilities and potential of open pedagogy without overselling it, including lots of questions about the limits of what open pedagogy can do. Some of the potential of open pedagogy I like so far include: no textbook, possibility for increased student input/engagement, possibility for enactment of Freirean ideas/practices, and self-grading (lol). I hear Jason on his concern about platitudinous references to Freire and student empowerment, but I also do very much like the idea that I could learn new tactics/strategies for actually getting to the Freirean goals that many of us are motivated by: student participation and engagement and creative learning, rather than rote memorization, “banking method”, etc.

The question they raise, and the article Jason referenced asking whether the “rhetoric matches the reality” is an interesting concern. It’ll be interesting to see where I end up on this question, as I “learn by doing” open pedagogy. A couple questions I have so far, after reflecting on the article’s examples of open pedagogy (making a Wikipedia entry, creating your own textbook or course or student education video) are : to what extent is this exploitative? I.e., getting the students to “do the work”? I guess my question going forward is, will this model be more like prisoners making license plates or PPE for pennies in prison, or more like Rupaul’s drag race, where contestants create creative content, get experience in competition and performance, free publicity and exposure of their art, and even, maybe, a cash prize? 

The second question I have is, is the approach of open pedagogy more about learning content or tech skills (critical digital literacy)? Don’t get me wrong, I think tech skills like this are valuable – maybe even more so for students like ours coming from financially challenged families and communities that may not have access to the latest software programs, skills, etc. I myself kind of wandered into being a Tech Fellow at the Grad Center (mostly bc I needed more funding and the fellowship paid well), but I learned a lot of skills along the way, particularly for someone who didn’t see themselves as particularly tech savvy up to that point. Through learning by doing, I did actually learn a lot that has helped me through the years, including in the classroom. In fact, going further back in time, one of the most valuable classes I took in high school was my typewriting class! Randomly selected (I think – can’t really remember if the selection was intentional or not), typewriting has saved me innumerable hours (including, in fact, right now, as I am quickly able to record my thoughts with a coming deadline), that others, who never took typewriting, cannot do. In fact, I am a little shocked at how many academic writers, who do countless hours of writing, struggle to type with a hunt-and-peck approach. 

At the same time, I can’t help but question Rosa and Robison’s references to writing essays as being “disposable” or “pointless busywork”. Maybe I’m a delusional academic or Freirean, but I do very much want to believe – and try to set up – a system where student work involves grappling with ideas. In such a way that this grappling, such as low-stakes weekly reflections on readings and higher stakes thought papers, stimulate important activity in the brain and create lasting connections with ideas. Unlike cramming factoids for the multiple choice test, to be flushed out afterward, I try to get students engaged with ideas – even if only a few – maybe even only one! (if it’s really good). Ideas they can carry with them into their future and use in their lives. Whether they ever re-read their paper or give a crap about keeping it (or whether it becomes the seed for something they go on to publish or work with) isn’t something I have a lot of control over. But I am hesitant to look at writing (and the close and concentrated reading that goes with it) as “disposable”. My last question has to do with the limits of the idea of “learning by doing”. I do have a soft spot for conceptual learning. Can learning by doing really teach concepts? Beyond tech skill concepts? Or utopian/futuristic tech skill concepts? I really don’t know yet, but maybe I’ll learn by doing  (or not, lol).  Finally, I have to say I like the idea of using open pedagogy as a way to “rethink our courses”. Making teaching creative, like learning, seems important. Open pedagogy’s focus on creativity seems very valuable in itself, a slightly different emphasis than simply “learning by doing”, which could involve making PPE in prison. How to ensure a mixture of creativity and conceptual thinking sounds like an interesting challenge. 

My three draft assignments are:

An infographic on an SDG target

An SDG-themed revision of my American Government What’s Your Problem Letter

A revised version of the final assignment for my linked POL-SOC class

I think I’m most happy with the infographic assignment, although that could well be because it’s brand new, and I haven’t seen its roadtest with actual students yet! I’ll work on revising them throughout the summer, before posting them to CUNY OER.

I am thankful to Jason for sharing his work with me. In our respective responses to one another’s assignments, we both recognized that there are some interesting similarities between our assignments which I found to be very instructive. 

In terms of assessment, I am intrigued by the fact that we are approaching rubrics from a similar place. Jason utilizes three different rubrics, one developed by the instructor, one by the class, and one for self-grading. I am examining ways that I can implement a similar model into my assignments. I appreciate Jason’s use of a self-grading component, which feels very “open.” I have used this in the past and frankly, in the transition to online learning, I neglected to use it. I find it quite useful in my performance classes, especially in scene work, so I look forward to bringing it back in the fall. Thanks to Jason for reminding me of this assessment tool.

Jason’s assignments are three assignments that are scaffolded in that one assignment leads to the next. They are very well conceived. The pedagogical approach is impressive, as is the academic rigor. I have never used Zines before and I feel under-qualified to use them in the classroom.  I find them not only interesting, but I also think they would translate well into the theatre classroom. Further, Jason’s use of Zines in his assignments has made me re-examine my own assignments in terms of their “openness.” While components like Wikipedia and found texts are open (which are components of my assignments), there are other components that feel more “closed” (published play scripts) than I would like. The openness in the pedagogical design of Jason’s work has shed light on that for me. Lastly, one of Jason’s assignments has a presentation component which reminded me of a presentation tool that I recently used for one of my online classes – VoiceThread. It allows students to upload recorded presentations and then the entire class and instructor can view them and comment on them within VoiceThread. It’s integrated in CUNY Academic Commons (which is how I utilized it) but apparently, CUNY just bought a subscription to integrate it into Blackboard. I just thought I would bring it up in the event it was useful for these assignments, or any of the assignments within our cohort.

There was some discussion about whether or not these scaffolded assignments are in fact three distinct assignments or just one very detailed, staged assignment. In reading the assignment guidelines, I think they feel like distinct assignments. Granted, yes, they do scaffold into one culminating assignment but each stage of the assignment, to me, has its own respective learning outcomes which, in my opinion, identifies it as a distinct assignment. Further, I feel that while the overarching goal is for each assignment to lead into the next, it seems that you could stop at the first or second assignment and they would still be worthy assessments. Curious how others feel about this in relationship to scaffolded assignments.

I look forward to revisiting my own assignments with this new perspective and additional pedagogical questions.

by Jason M. Leggett

Ryan identifies three clear learning outcomes for the assignments for fall 2020: 

Identify the various roles, positions, duties and considerations associated with modern theatrical practice and professional theatrical production.

Discuss and define the unique characteristics of the theatrical artform, as well as its place within American society and World Cultures.

Define and recognize major periods of theatrical history and their significance.

What I like about these outcomes is that there is a coherent whole with identifiable pieces. Theatrical history is on one end and the elements of structural history: roles, positions, duties, considerations, and characteristics can be broken down to help students see a progression and the social construction of history. 

One assignment provides exploration of global themes showing students a world beyond Broadway – Hollywood; The second allows for a personal choice and exploration of identity as a construct. The culminating assignment best represents the ideals we have discussed this semester about open pedagogy: 

In groups, students will research an under-explored figure from theatre history, review the corresponding Wikipedia entries and offer edits/additions to those entries.

Students will be placed into groups of 3-4 students.From a list provided by the professor, students will select a woman or non-binary theatre artist from theatre history whose Wikipedia entry is underwritten. Through online and textual research, students will identify one major theatrical contribution that has been omitted from the relevant Wikipedia entries and offer a new written passage for possible inclusion. Students will present the passage to class, along with appropriate secondary source citations, and determine if/how the passage should be added to the Wikipedia page for inclusion.

In reflection, we both examine a relationship between constructed identities and text as a representation of knowledge. I really like the kinesthetic elements in Ryan’s pieces and will try to introduce some of these into my own practice. The final trans-identity assignment provides opportunities for both rich personal exploration and dialogue with larger groups. We both utilze elements of actor network theory but in Ryan’s class students are asked to draft a script; I am intrigued by the possibilities. Ryan incorporates the theme of justice and global/diversity throughout the semester so I anticipate a wide range of narratives that reflect the positionality of our students. I appreciate that Ryan provides choice while also indicating what content is to be covered. I think this is a good balance between providing professional guidance (epistemology) and providing culturally relevant learning opportunities (pedagogy).

As a member college of AAC&U, Kingsborough has committed to diversity and global learning. As Senior Researcher Caryn Musil identiifies, “educating students for a global future is no longer elective.” The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has identified global knowledge, ethical commitments to individual and social responsibility, and intercultural skills as major components of a twenty-first-century liberal education. Recognizing that their graduates will work and live in an interdependent, highly diverse, fast-changing, and volatile world, an increasing number of colleges and universities are including global learning goals in their mission statements (Meacham and Gaff 2006). I think we have made progress this semester in thinking through how to reduce the gap between global learning as an ideal and the practice of it within the educational setting. 

This semester, being forced to transition courses to distance learning, I’ve struggled with how to create an environment of creative and applied learning experiences rather than just learning activities that focus on the more basic skills of remembering and understanding of course content.  Typically in my face to face courses a significant amount of time is spent in applied learning activities many of which include role playing, simulations, and student lead demonstrations, etc. Some of the challenge (aside from teaching during a pandemic and all that entails!) is my limited knowledge and use of LMS systems other than as a repository for grading assignments, student introductions, quizzes/tests, and some limited group interactions/projects usually in dyads.  However I do feel that experiential learning experiences are challenging to construct in an online platform even in the best of times.

This semester is also the first time that I’ve dipped my toes in the waters of O.E.R. and Open Pedagogy as well.  My initial understanding of O.E.R. was simply that it was a way of saving students some money, which is fantastic in itself of course, but I had not really recognized its potential impact through the perspective lenses of accessibility and all its implications.  I knew even less about Open Pedagogy when my Chair suggested that I involve myself in this initiative this semester.  My cursory understanding was that it had “something to do” with students co-creating course content which given many of the courses I teach which articulate with upper level programs in other colleges my initial reaction was “ ok but how is that going to work?”

As the semester has unfolded and there has been a bit of time to delve deeper my vision and appreciation of both O.E.R. and Open Pedagogy has been expanding along with my enthusiasm. I am beginning to glimpse that co-created learning activities might help to address my initial frustration with how to move from wrote memory learning to more creative applied experiential activities even if we must continue with distance learning.

Travis Thurston, Assistant Director of Empowering Teaching Excellence at University of Utah, has addressed the concept of creating an “architecture of engagement” within L.M.S. environments by moving past the traditional use of discussion board posts/comments to more constructed exchanges with playful or game based prompts to encourage participation along with incentives for extra credit (tricky) built in. He has structured on line conversations incorporating Blooms Taxonomy to cue the students on the type and depth of posts and responses to topic areas being explored. Students do have the flexibility both at the beginning of the course and throughout to direct the flow of conceptual exploration.

I still am thrashing about a bit with how to manage the involvement and participation of student groups in an online environment. I eliminated those activities this semester because I was unsure if students would be able to consistently engage in intra-group interactions and projects as I’ve found that challenging in the past even in the best of times. Often the connection between students that is formed in the face to face classroom does help with supporting their engagement together in on line Blackboard activities. I look to the “collective wisdom” for supportive ideas in this aspect of constructing student initiated group projects and online activities to maximize their participation.

Thurston, T, “Online Engagement Through Digital Powerups”, (Audio podcast) Episode 295, Teaching in Higher Education, February 2, 2020

Online Engagement Through Digital PowerUps

I apologize for not posting this sooner, as I know you will not have time to read for today, but I will once again plug the work of Maura A. Smale and Mariana Regalado who co-authored Digital Technology as Affordance and Barrier in Higher Education. They are both CUNY professors and their work documents the challenges of open education when students do/do not have access to technology. As I wrote about in my earlier post, this seems to be especially relevant for this moment. While I first read it about a year ago, I think I need to give it another read this summer, especially if we are looking at some form of distance-learning for the fall 2020 semester. I have a PDF of the text if anyone would like me to share it with them, or if we want to post to the course site.

In terms of SDGs, piloting my course and possible assignments, I plan on piloting this work in THA 50: Introduction to Theatre. It is the course in which I first began my work with open pedagogy and I believe it is time to revisit/rethink that work. The SDGs that I am considering are Goal #5: Gender Equality and Goal #10: Reduced Inequalities. Preliminarily, I have two possible assignments that I am considering. The first is less of an assignment and more of a theme for the course, in that all of the plays that we would read and analyze in the course would somehow intersect, illuminate, grapple with the selected SDGs. Plays/Genres that come to mind include School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play by Jocelyn Bioh, Eclipsed by Danai Gurira, the work of Augusto Boal and Theatre of the Oppressed (Brazil), Is This a Room by Tina Satter, and Sactuary City by Martyna Majok. The second assignment is a “Rewriting His(hers)tory” assignment where students select women artists from theatre history, conduct research and then explore the Wikipedia pages of these artists for gaps in the information. Students will then submit edits to expand the Wikipedia entries with cited secondary literature.

When I initially applied to be an OER fellow and this pandemic was not such a presence in our lives, I thought I would explore these SDGs through THA 53: Acting II/Scene Study (which I definitely could still do). But I am doing several “open” projects right now, all of which are touching upon my work in THA 50 so it seems like the logical choice. I look forward to seeing how these preliminary ideas expand and morph as our conversations continue.

Backward Design – Urban Sociology                    Fall 2020

1. Where do you want to go?

1. Urban Sociology Objectives
   1. Understand and distinguish between myths and realities regarding city life and other human settlements. 
   1. Understand the importance of politics and the economy in structuring cities. 
   1. Identify the impact of globalization on emergence and development of cities.
   1. Identify other forces (immigration, e.g.) impacting cities. 
   1. Identify, locate and use appropriate sources of information for academic work. 
   1. Identify and understand community activism in urban settings. 
   1. General Sociological Understandings
      1. Social Construction of Reality
      1. System model of society
      1. Power as a relational distribution of resources, including attention.
      1. Collective Action
      1. Narrative organization of our perceptions
      1. Method for construction of new knowledge
   1. Skills
      1. Improve their writing in terms of its attention to audience, argument and validity of its sources.
      1. Be able to describe and draw conclusions from graphs, and pivot tables.
      1. Be able to independently gather publicly available, outside sources of information for use in their own research.
   1. Conceptual Fluency
      1. Seeing Mental Models – understanding thinking
      1. Coordinating Classes
      1. Application of Conceptual Models – RPD, Iceberg Model, Trust Equation
   1. Participating in an academic/professional register
      1. Presentations for both an academic and lay audience – oral, textual and other media.

• How will we know when we have arrived?

1. Students will be able to write a 3 – 5 page analytic essay that uses the concepts of the course to explain a feature, domain, or circumstance in the world of their own choosing.
   1. Students will be able to produce a blog, website, PSA or other artefact that can be posted to the public domain that makes use of one or more concepts from the course in its analysis/message.
   1. Students will engage in a project that includes data collection, data organization and analysis. This may include, interviews, surveys and statistical data.

• What do we need to get us there?

Framing Question for the course: What might local and global responses to Climate Change

look like in Cities? Or, Are we all going to have to learn to live under water?

1. Models
   1. Role Power Diagram
   1. Iceberg Model of society
   1. Trust Equation
   1. Experiences of different systems  (in Hybrid format only)
      1. Cold War/Bombing Game
      1. Market system
      1. Village system
      1. Tribal, hunter-gatherer system
   1. History
      1. James Scott – Against the Grain
      1. The origin of cities and the evolution of complex human economic/social/political systems.
   1. Presentations
      1. Evolution of Slavery
      1.   
      1.   
   1. Minor Assignments – formative assessments
      1. Extended writing assignments every two weeks on Turnitin.
      1. Weekly homework assignments to Blackboard – bulk feedback to all through the Week in Review.
   1. Major Assignments
      1. Weekly Homework – 15%
      1. Midterm Exam – (long answer and essay)  15%
      1. Final Exam – (long answer and essay)    15%
      1. Final Project – essay, video, presentation – outside audience 30%
      1. Writing Portfolio – assessment of individual growth 25%

Organizing Theme/Project for the course:

UN Sustainability Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/cities/

The four elements of the goal above (inclusiveness, safety, resilience and sustainability) will be explored by students over the course of the semester, which will be divided into three phases.

1.      Introduction. Origin and Relationships.

2.      Data Collection and Relationships.

3.      Analysis, Communication and Relationships.

Cities are not things. They are not buildings, roads, pipes or monuments. They are cultural, political and economic relationships between groups embodied in particular places at particular times.

Phase One:   Origins, History & Current Challenges

            Through an examination of the text, Against the Grain, by James Scott (freely available to students on Perusall.com) students will develop an understanding of the emergence of cities and the dynamics that have made them the dominant for of settlement over the past 7,000 years.

            This will be followed by a focus on the growing urbanization of the planet and the growing impacts of climate change on that process.

Phase Two:   Mapping Project

            Through the use of Arc GIS, students will explore, individually and in groups, spatially-based data in the pursuit of both teacher-generated and student-generated questions around the general topic of Climate Change and the building of resilience.

Phase Three:  Culminating Project with Audience

            During the final month of the course, students will focus on Brooklyn and/or New York City and the issue of resilience. They will identify the top three expected impacts from Climate Change and using Arc GIS they will identify which parts of the city and the communities that live there will be most impacted. They will then develop/explore different potential strategies for increasing the resilience of those areas and develop an intervention to either the general public or a targeted group of decision-makers to share their ideas.

So, I have been thinking about this idea for a while, and have really appreciated situating it within the OP/SDG framework. It is not entirely formulated but the idea is to create a classroom research project based on the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) of the 1930s, which has been the focus of my own research. By way of context, the FWP hired some 6,000 Americans during the Depression to document the country. The idea was to generate a portrait of national identity that would celebrate diversity and engage people from all backgrounds in the cultures and folklore of their own country.

My project would align with the “reduced inequalities” SDG, in its goal to “promote social cohesion between groups of diverse natures.” It would essentially be a contemporary and localized version of the FWP, that would invite students to document and investigate KCC’s community in the same spirit as the 1930s fieldworkers. Within the context of my English composition courses, I would charge students with collecting and transcribing oral histories and folklore (broadly defined as cultural practices), and writing ethnographic essays and profiles based on students and faculty—within a series of guided “topics,” that themselves also align with various SDGs.  

But the key sustainable OP aspect of this is that the class would use digital tools to collect, catalogue and disseminate the archive and they’d showcase their work on a website that could continue to be populated by future students in new composition courses. This would not be a one-off course project, but a longer-term repository for living history, not to mention a useful curriculum for the composition program. Students would be developing and expanding the skills fundamental to these courses– textual analysis, critical writing, and research methods—in a format that I believe could be really accessible and empowering, that connects them to one another, and that has a life and purpose beyond the immediate classroom.

The result ideally would be a complex portrait of collective identity, which certainly in this crazy moment, seems to take on an urgency akin to that felt during the Depression. I’ve done a lot of oral history collecting in the classroom, and it always generates fascinating discussions, questions, and stronger bonds between students from very different backgrounds. But both the FWP and the SDGs offer these efforts historical shape and purpose that I believe would make them more focused and meaningful.

That’s it. There’s more to say but I’ll stop — I’d love to hear everyone’s thoughts.

–Sara Rutkowski