This blog presents teaching strategies that are conducive to creating community and cultivating learning in both face-to-face and online courses.  In mid-March 2020, many instructors found themselves scrambling to convert their in-person courses to an online format.  This blog post suggests a blueprint that is conducive to either in-person or remote instruction; such a blueprint is particularly important given that the 2020-2021 Academic Year will likely require instructors to pivot to online instruction at some point in the coming months.
 
Clear Structure
 
            All courses benefit from a clear organizational structure.  This goes beyond having a clear syllabus and grading rubrics.  This entails leveraging your institution’s learning management system (LMS), typically Blackboard or Canvas, in such a way that each week of the course is clearly displayed. For example, my Blackboard course creates separate modules for each week of the course.  When students enter our Blackboard course, the left-hand menu shows the following tabs: Syllabus, About the Instructor, Watch Me First (which contains a Kaltura video overview of the syllabus), Course Reserves, and then a module for each week of the course (e.g., Week 1, Week 2, etc.).  Moreover, each weekly folder contains the following sub-folders:  Read, Watch / Listen, Lectures, and Assignments.   This blog post will circle back to the information that is contained within those sub-folders within the following paragraphs.
 
Blackboard / Canvas
 
            My syllabus mirrors my Blackboard course structure. For example, within Week 1 of my course, my syllabus has the following sections:  Read, Watch / Listen, Lectures, and Assignments.   The first sub-heading, “Read,” is self-explanatory.  Within the “Watch / Listen” folder, I assign YouTube clips, podcasts, movie trailers, music videos, and other multimedia that align with that week’s learning content.  The “Lecture” folder contains a PDF of the Google Slides for that week’s lecture; for online courses, the “Lecture” folder also contains a video of that week’s lecture. Finally, the “Assignments” folder contains a place where students can submit a Discussion Board post or complete an assessment, such as a quiz, test, essay, or other assignment.
 
Encourage Dialogue
 
            One of the biggest challenges many instructors encounter when pivoting their courses from in-person to online is how to create community and encourage dialogue in an online setting.  This section will discuss three methods to encourage dialogue in either in-person or online courses: PDFs of slides, Reflection Questions, and Discussion Boards / FlipGrid.  
 
            PDF of Slides
 
            All my courses use slides, regardless of whether they are online, in-person, synchronous, or asynchronous.  The slides meet four pedagogical and practical goals.  First, the slides enable me to institutionalize course content. This is particularly helpful for instructors who have high teaching loads and thus have to pivot from one course to another. However, it is also helpful for
instructors with lower teaching loads, who might be asked to teach a course they have not had for several semesters.  Second, the slides facilitate pedagogy that draws from the Socratic method and from active learning; for example, in addition to drawing from the “Watch / Listen” content on a syllabus, the slides can also feature additional multimedia content that allow students to dive more deeply into certain topics on their own time.  Moreover, if students are less talkative in a particular class, the multimedia slides can provide built-in activities that instructors can leverage to spark discussion in meaningful ways. Third, the slides make it easier for a course to be taught either in-person or online, as instructors can use their slides to record and upload lectures to Blackboard / Canvas.  Fourth, students can use the slides as a study guide; I give students PDFs of my Google slides for this express purpose.  The below paragraphs address how I structure my slides to meet the four aforementioned pedagogical and practical goals.
 
First, I choose a different template for my slides for every week of the semester. Many students love this, as it adds excitement and variety to the course.  As one of my students once told me while preparing for an exam in my Western Legal Tradition class, “I visualized the information on the slides during the exam; in my mind, I thought, “Rome is Red” (because the slides are red), and I could see the answer.”  For visual learners, having slides with different color schemes for each course units can be very useful. I find that Google Slides performs this role in both my online and my in-person classes; this is even true for my asynchronous classes.  Google Slides has a wide variety of templates available online; many individuals even share their own, self-made templates, which you are welcome to use as long as you give credit to the original source. 
 
Second, my slides are built upon the Socratic method.  The first slide will contain a few open-ended questions, and the second slide will contain a short answer to those questions.  I use the first slide as a way to spark conversation; the second slide then gives a brief answer.  I will bold, highlight, and underline key words on each slide; students with different visual abilities may not be able to differentiate the highlighted text from regular text, but they can see the bold or underlined information.  This method not only encourages students to answer questions in class, but it also assuages anxiety around exam time, as students have a study guide built into the course.  I repeat this format of “question slide, answer slide” for the first six slides, before I move on to a “multimedia slide” (discussed in the next paragraph).
 
Third, my “multimedia slides” incorporate the “Watch / Listen” items on my syllabus.  For example, the movie trailer “Marshall” features a clip where then-NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall says, “We’re not slaves now, are we? We’ve got weapons we didn’t have before – we’ve got the law.”  I then ask students if they agree or disagree with this statement.  Is the law a weapon? If so, who has the authority to use it, and who is oppressed by it? Sometimes I revisit the same movie trailer multiple times a semester, pulling different themes from course readings, such as “the law and social change,” “critical race theory,” or “legal consciousness.”  I often include two or three “multimedia slides” after each set of six “question / answer slides.”  The multimedia slides can also highlight content that is not in the syllabus, but that is relevant to the course content; for example, I might include a link to an online documentary with several reflection questions that students can choose to watch on their own time as a way to deepen their knowledge in a particular area.  By organizing my slides in this manner, I am able to respond to different learning styles, while also covering the course content; moreover, the slides allow students to deepen their knowledge in different areas, should they choose to do so. 
 
Reflection Questions
 
Each week of my syllabus features “Reflection Questions” based on the assigned readings and multimedia content.  This gives students guidance about what to focus upon in the required weekly materials, and helps them identify important themes across different units of the course.  As an added incentive, I tell students that Reflection Questions might be a future exam question or reflection paper topic.  In addition, my Google Slides often include a few of the reflection questions, which gives students the opportunity to prepare for class discussions in advance.
 
Discussion Boards / FlipGrid
 
Online asynchronous courses are perhaps the most challenging instructional format for purposes of creating community and encouraging discussion.  I find that a mixture of discussion boards and FlipGrid posts help to meet these objectives.  Both of these tools have different pros and cons.  Discussion boards allow students to practice their writing and critical thinking, while reflecting upon the thoughts and views of their peers; however, they can be time-consuming and anxiety-inducing for students who struggle with writing.  By contrast, FlipGrid is a sort of academic TikTok; students can choose to post a video or audio-recording of themselves responding to reflection questions.  Students tend to have fun with FlipGrid, which has multiple filters, stickers, and other effects.  Since FlipGrid allows you to make audio-only recordings, it allows students to decide whether or not they wish to disclose their home environment.  Moreover, some learning management systems, such as Canvas, have FlipGrid built into them as an optional instructional tool.  By alternating between discussion boards and FlipGrid, you can encourage students to practice their writing and critical thinking skills, while also having them practice their verbal articulation of course concepts, just as they would in a live classroom setting.  In addition, for both discussion boards and FlipGrid, you might consider having an optional “student space” that is ungraded for students to communicate with one another.  
 
Worksheets
 
            Worksheets can be a powerful tool to encourage in-class discussions and to help students prepare for exams or papers.  For my in-person courses, I have students pick up a worksheet as they enter the classroom.  For my online courses, I post worksheets in their own folder in Blackboard’s left-hand menu.  For my in-person courses, I arrive to the classroom a few minutes early so that I can play a Spotify playlist with songs chosen by students.  This creates a welcoming environment; students know that their “jam” might be playing, and the worksheets prepare them for some of the questions that will be in the lecture slides.  This allows students to refresh their memory about that day’s course content, and to think about their answers to particular questions.  This is a particularly powerful tool for students who may be shy or for whom English is not their first language, as it allows them to write down their answers to in-class questions, making them feel more prepared and empowered to speak up when the class officially starts.  My worksheets occasionally have sections where students can propose exam questions, giving them agency and control in the course.   At the end of the class, I collect all of the worksheets; I do not grade them, but instead, I skim them to see how well students have grasped that week’s course content, and whether I need to review anything in class for a second time.  I then return the worksheets to students for them to use a study guide. 
 
Conclusion
 
            The above-listed teaching strategies can be leveraged in either in-person or online courses.  They are conducive to different academic disciplines and class sizes.  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these instructional strategies likely prompted a response from you, the reader – you may have thought of additional pros or cons to these strategies, or you may have thought of entirely different strategies.  If so, then this blog post has served its purpose;  it has sparked conversation about best pedagogical practices, and has hopefully opened avenues for additional dialogue on creating community and cultivating learning.

Hillary Mellinger is an instructor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University. Her research focuses on issues of social justice and inequality, particularly as they pertain to immigration policy. She can be contacted at hillary.mellinger@american.edu.

Hillary Mellinger is an instructor in the Department of Justice, Law, and Criminology at American University.  Her research focuses on issues of social justice and inequality, particularly as they pertain to immigration policy. She can be contacted at hillary.mellinger@american.edu. 

It is possible to get undergrads to fall in love with “no PowerPoints”. It is also possible to get them to grow as writers in a content course. For the Fall of 2019, I was teaching Law and Society, a 300-level sociology class at the University at Buffalo, SUNY (UB). The 70-student section primarily consisted of juniors and seniors. On the first day of class, I polled the students to see who had the intention of going to law school or graduate school. Over 80% responded “Yes,” and there were a handful of “Maybes.” This reaffirmed my decision to structure the course as a “mini grad class,” both in terms of content delivery, and as an opportunity to improve their writing.

With 22,000 undergraduates, UB is similar to other large, R1 institutions. Lecture halls, PowerPoints, and Scantrons are the default for much of an undergraduate’s time here. Writing assignments may be completely absent from many classes, or if assigned, graded quite liberally. These assignments usually do not offer much by way of feedback or growth opportunities for students. To my mind, churning out underprepared, incoming graduate or law school cohorts is a royal disservice to both the students and the programs.
I opted for a grad-style course approach, which used no PowerPoints, no exams, and no textbook. And, no laptops or tablets were allowed (yes, you can probably hear the groans on the first day of class in your mind). I provided articles and scanned chapters to Blackboard. I was forthright with the students on the first day; if they wanted to go to – and succeed in – law school or grad school, they had better get used to this style of class. Instead of a single term paper, I opted for an incremental paper scheme, to both assess their content comprehension, and help them grow as writers.

This incremental paper approach is a hybrid of growth and proficiency models, and loosely based on Vygotsky’s (1978) Gradual Release of Responsibility. While still assessing their understanding of the material, the papers themselves increased in length and point value, and were graded more stringently each time. There were four short papers throughout the semester, and one final paper due at the end of the semester. Paper 1 was 1 – 1.5 pages in length; Paper 2 was 1.5 – 2 pages; Paper 3 was a firm 2 pages in length; Paper 4 was 2 – 2.5 pages; and the final paper was 6 pages, plus a reference page. The grading was 50, 75, 100, 150, and 500 points respectively. The prompts for each paper varied, but allowed students choice or flexibility in their responses. Paper 1 allowed for ungraded/low-penalty feedback, and also provided me with a baseline for their individual and collective writing aptitude. As long as they put forth solid effort responding to a prompt that gave them lots of free space to connect course material to their own lives, they received full credit. However, their papers were marked heavily with corrections and notes about spelling, grammar, and structure. I used a “two ink” strategy: green ink for positive comments, blue ink for neutral or corrective comments. Paper 2 saw point reductions for major or repeat grammatical errors, and so on, and so forth with each subsequent paper. The final paper was held to very high standards for spelling and grammar, format and structure, and content comprehension.

Because the course material was delivered through peer-reviewed journal and law review articles, and academic book chapters, holding a discussion-based and paper-based semester allowed immediate engagement and clarification on complex concepts (i.e., their first exposure to legal consciousness, or the disputing pyramid). While a PowerPoint-style lecture class may drive recall and rote definitional regurgitation, is an undergraduate who has never encountered legal mobilization before really going to have an “a-ha!” lightbulb moment in that setting? By the time they completed the first paper, students’ responses showed that they were on board with this style of class; and that they understood and appreciated how our discussions and writing assignments were opportunities for them to explore their own thinking. Since the papers allowed students some flexibility in their responses, or required them to connect concepts to their own interests/experiences, the discomfort with new or difficult material was softened.

In addition to the assignment format and schedule, certain classes were designed as workshop days. In one class I covered how to efficiently extract information from peer-review or law review articles; another was a half-class overview of ASA and APA citations; another session was dedicated to an in-class write and ask questions day for their final papers. These were the moments where I overheard the, “I really like getting to write like this,” or, “This is actually a fun paper idea.” Paired with mid-semester and end of semester evaluations, it was clear that the students came around to the no PowerPoint, “mini grad class” environment.

I was utterly impressed with their growth by the end of the semester. While grading their final papers – a prompt requiring them to take a stance, formulate an argument, and provide evidence for the course throughline question, “Does law shape society, or does society shape law?” – I was so proud of how well their skills had developed. Their writing was noticeably stronger and sharper, and their ability to make claims and incorporate concepts stood out. It is important to note; this model may not be appropriate for every institution or situation. 70 students are about the maximum I would feel comfortable getting away with this as an unassisted solo instructor. However, if anyone teaching undergraduate Law and Society or Sociology of Law wants to use this approach, please do. There is a bit of a “rip the band-aid off” curve at first. But, when presented as a way to prepare students for the rigors of graduate or law school, and that you are actively committed to helping them grow as writers, the approach was successful in my experience.

Zaque Evans is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. His interests include all realms of public policy, urban/spatial sociology, political economy, and media. His current research projects are focused on media framing of the 2017 Tax Cuts, and where urban and economic redevelopment funds are distributed across Western New York. He can be reached at zacharye@buffalo.edu.

I joined the Center for Advancing Correctional Excellence (ACE!) as a master’s student in Fall 2017 and was immediately intertwined into my advisor, Dr. Danielle Rudes’, nested mentoring model. For the first year at ACE!, I worked closely with Dr. Kimberly Meyer on a variety of projects, including a project in collaboration with a probation department assessing their risk assessment tools, and on her dissertation that considered turning points in and out of crime for juveniles. In many ways, I believe that I survived and thrived during my first year of graduate school because of Kimberly. She helped me in indescribable ways – whether it was navigating a class I struggled with, editing a scholarship narrative, or giving me recommendations on project management. I am incredibly thankful for everything I had learned from Kimberly during my short time at ACE!. When I expressed this to her as she prepared for her position as a professor, she explained the value in “paying it forward.” These three words are now the foundation of my work as a mentor.

Dr. Rudes developed an Undergraduate Research Laboratory at ACE! over ten years ago that gives undergraduate students the ability to work alongside doctoral, and masters’ students, and faculty to enhance their research experiences. I co-direct the lab and get to work with an incredible team of undergraduate research assistants (UGRAs) every day at ACE!. For example, GMU undergraduate, Khanh Nguyen, joined ACE! as a UGRA in January 2019 to assist me with my thesis research. I spent the first few weeks deeply orienting Khanh to the project – explaining the background and development of the project, the data collection process, and preliminary findings. I wanted Khanh to feel like she had been a part of the project since it originated; like she was in the field collecting data with our team. Khanh was an instrumental part of my thesis from the time that I finished data collection throughout my defense. She assisted with data entry, qualitative coding and analysis, and helped with editing and proof-reading as my defense approached.

Another GMU undergrad, Zachery Zaborowski, joined ACE! in June 2019 because he was interested in participating in research of consequence. Zach originally worked on transcribing interview data, and then accompanied us to a prison data collection trip in August. I taught him qualitative research methods and prepared him for the trip; however, I had no expectation for Zach to be an exemplar field interviewer or observer. In fact, I suspected that he would spend the week observing the data collection process. However, I distinctly remember the moment that I knew that he would someday be an excellent researcher. I was interviewing an individual who was living in restricted housing. He mentioned that he sometimes decides not to go to yard/recreation. I, not being a curious qualitative researcher, was more focused on getting through the interview protocol. However, Zach asked if he could ask a question. Of course, I said yes. Zach inquired, “How do you make the decision whether or not to go to yard?” This simple question yielded an intricate discussion of the unit staff offering showers and particular groups during that time because there is not enough space to accommodate a large group.

Toward the end of this interview, this individual shared with us that they were in the process of transitioning from female to male and his desire to transfer to a male institution. After the interview concluded, Zach asked if he could go back to ask a few questions. When Zach returned, he shared with me that he asked him to talk about his experience being transgender while living in restricted housing more generally. This individual expressed his frustration with others’ unwillingness to call him by his preferred pronouns and shared details about the process involved with hormone therapy and obtaining a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. From that moment, Zach was intrigued by transgender inmate’s experiences in restricted housing, and even did a solo interview with another transgender individual on the unit.

Sometimes, when I leave prisons, I feel guilty in that I only “take” from interviewees, and I have nothing to immediately “give” back – sure, we send a final report with recommendations and thoughtful thank you letters, but there is no guarantee that the recommendations will be implemented. In many ways, having UGRAs can feel similar in that we take their (sometimes) free labor, but may not be able to give them something back in equal comparison. This realization is why I ensure that the relationships that I build with my UGRAs are symbiotic. I believe this is the foundation and most beneficial part of having a nested mentoring model, and that this is how I pay it forward.

While I am incredibly grateful for the help UGRAs provide on my research, it is my mission to encourage and provide the opportunity for my UGRAs to pursue their own research endeavors at ACE!. After Zach demonstrated his passion for LGBTQ+ issues in prison, I suggested that he begin his own project to understand living experiences among LGBTQ+ individuals living in prison. After the data collection trip, Zach spent the following semester working with a team of graduate students to openly code two years of interview data, and is now currently working on a manuscript that he will be presenting at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) conference in March 2020. Additionally, Khanh is preparing to do an undergrad thesis project and will be using portions of my MA thesis data for her project. Throughout the next year, I will be working closely with Khanh on her project with the goal of helping her submit a manuscript for publication.

I not only assist my UGRAs in gaining research experience, but also in meeting their personal goals and objectives. I work closely and at length with each of my UGRAs on their professional development – including preparing and editing their resumes/CVs, cover letters, personal statements and narratives, and job, scholarship, and graduate school applications. Throughout my time co-directing the lab, I have celebrated graduate school acceptances and admissions, job offers, and numerous scholarship awards with my UGRAs.
​
In such a short time, I have learned so much from my mentor, Dr. Rudes and also from these remarkable students, whether it was a learning technique that worked particularly well (or not so well), or some seemingly nonchalant technological shortcut that I had no idea existed (most notably, learning that I can split the screen on my laptop). Working with UGRAs is by far the most rewarding aspect of being a graduate student. I have had opportunities that are unheard of for doctoral students. Every day, I get to teach and train UGRAs about research. I develop training to teach UGRAs new skills. I assist UGRAs with their professional development, and help them secure jobs, internships, scholarships, or admission into graduate school programs. But most importantly, I get to have my mentor and our UGRA team by my side in every aspect of the research process – learning from Dr. Rudes and the UGRAs as they learn from me. Paying it forward is an amazing gift!

The Legal Studies Undergraduate Board (LSUB) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a student run organization that helps familiarize, support, and network fellow students in the Legal Studies major at UMass. While there are many benefits to an organization like LSUB, three major features of the board stand out in particular.

First, LSUB members are able to talk with upperclassmen about their courses, helping them figure out which classes and professors may best suit their learning styles and pique their interests. This is a valuable opportunity because it allows underclassmen the chance to ask questions that they may not feel comfortable asking a professor, or those that cannot be answered by a professor, such as how the class feels from a student’s perspective.

Second, LSUB is particularly focused on networking with UMass and Legal Studies alumni, both in the legal and non-legal worlds. By holding workshops and events with attorneys and judges, but also non-legal professionals who have majored in Legal Studies, the students are able to gain insight to the real life application of the Legal Studies major. In this way, LSUB is a great means for people to connect in an intimate setting, which allows for very positive networking experiences. One event that gained a lot of attention this year was the presentation given by an admissions committee member at a nearby law school. This event received a great deal of positive feedback, and underclassmen found it particularly useful as it exposed them to the law school admissions process and how that fits with different career paths.

Finally, LSUB facilitates discussion between the students and the faculty in the Legal Studies Program. During our meetings, we are constantly asking for feedback on classes, including meeting times, workloads, the types of assignments, and the like. In addition, we discuss internship, networking, and research assistantship opportunities, and meet with faculty job candidates. We then provide feedback from students as a group to faculty in the Legal Studies Program, including routine meetings with the Director of Legal Studies. This feedback has resulted in several notable changes to the Legal Studies major, including offering new classes and increasing the times at which courses are offered.

As a whole, we feel that LSUB is a great organization that helps foster community within the Legal Studies major that could be replicated at other colleges and universities with law and society majors, minors, and concentrations.

I have been teaching undergraduates since 2001, and in an interdisciplinary undergraduate legal studies department since ’06. I’ve had the chance to work with hundreds (a thousand?) of students over the years and honestly delight in helping them see connections between courses, among authors, and between their lives and the readings. I know that helping them learn about reproductive justice, American Indian survival, and – yes – the gap between law in the books and law in action – is important work.

That doesn’t mean that, some days, I don’t wonder what the point is.

There are times I leave the classroom completely jazzed because the discussion was SOOOOO good – and yet, I hear a voice in my head asking “Why did we just spend 75 minutes in conversation about legal pluralism, or class action law suits, or systems of oppression that they are – individually – powerless to change?” What’s worse, I have a fantasy that my colleagues in math and pharmacy, the business school, and the physical sciences never feel this way – that each lesson they teach is obviously and clearly relevant to the next, and to the work their students will do when they are young professionals.

Many of my students go on to law school. I know that I am preparing them well for the work of reading closely, thinking analytically, and writing clearly. But I also know that law school will change their understanding of law, their relationship to linguistic and professional power, and their view of the same systems we’re learning to understand and occasionally critique. Many of our students will go directly into the workforce – some as political campaign workers and advisors, some to policy analysis groups, some to governmental affairs offices. Yes; they’ll know how to meet deadlines, how think about ways to evaluate the impact of policy on different groups of people, and how to – yep – write clearly. But how will their understanding of the 5th Amendment’s Takings Clause factor into their work? How will their ability to talk about the novel An American Marriage and its relationship to mass incarceration be meaningful to their professional life at MidAmerican Energy or in the legal affairs department at Meredith Corporation?

I will readily tell you that I don’t think a college degree is necessary for everyone, nor is it necessary for success. I will also tell you that going to college changed me so profoundly I am still, 25 years later, learning from the experience. My desire is to provide my students with the kinds of meaningful experiences and opportunities that I had during those four years, but I also know that the most important thing I learned in college was how to learn. It wasn’t until my fifth year of graduate school that I understood how what I was studying could lead to a career – and let’s be honest, that’s only because the only career for a nonquantitative PhD in Political Science in the late 1990s was “being a professor.” We send only one student every three years or so to doctoral programs (hi Phoebe! hi Richard!) – replicating the field isn’t where my colleagues and I find meaning – no matter how much joy I feel in being part of a field/discipline.

Increasingly, honestly, I feel an ethical responsibility to provide students with a shot at an education that offers opportunity for both material and cognitive growth and betterment. In a field where we often critique the transactional approach to education, I still feel an ethical responsibility to make sure the transaction is a beneficial one to the folks who come into my classroom.

A new opportunity has come my way – probably just in time, given that these end-of-semester musings tend to creep in as early as February, now. I’ve just been named the Herb and Karen Baum Professor of Ethical Leadership in the Professions at my home institution (Drake University). The three-year professorship comes with two primary obligations: to host a Symposium in the second year on a topic of my choosing related to ethical leadership, and to teach a course once a year on that same topic. I’ve decided to focus on the issues that I’ve been pondering lately: the role of higher education in developing capacity for ethical decision-making and leadership in our students – simultaneous to our role in helping them develop cognitive capacities around core subject matter; the ways that a liberal arts education is pre-professional education, and appropriately so; and the ways that universities themselves have ethical obligations to our students around issues of access, equity, diversity, affordability, and job readiness.

I’ve put together a team of undergrads (hi Jaime, Gabrielle, Rae Ann, Jackie, and Marisa!), and we’re spending summer and fall reading together from a nice list of books on higher education in the present age; and I’ve put together a reading list for myself, on finance in higher education and the ways our ‘business model’ operates (and fails).

I’d love help from readers here, in particular, in developing a list that also understands how how undergraduate legal studies and sociolegal faculty have thought about the university and the professoriate’s role in creating lawyers, scholars, citizens, and ethical humans.

Please reach out: comment here, send me an email (renee.cramer@drake.edu), find me at LSA or the WPSA. I want us, as a community, to find meaning in the work we do, beyond the tremendous, real, important and fun it is to think and write and teach about law and society J - I invite a conversation about how what we teach our students really does matter, and how we can continue to teach them things that will serve them throughout their professional lives.

Renée Ann Cramer
Professor of Law, Politics, and Society
Drake University

​For the past two years, I have taught an experimental course in the undergraduate Criminology, Law and Society (CLS) Program of the Sociology Department, University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). Under the title “Research Projects in Criminology, Law and Society” (SOC440), this is an unusual course in several ways. Instead of meeting weekly for a semester, it meets every other week over a whole academic year. Although some academic articles are assigned as course readings, the focus is not on the substantive topics they cover, but on their research designs and writing styles. Most importantly, students spend most of their time during the year designing an empirical research project, collecting data, and writing up a research paper by the end of the year. It is not a thesis course, but an opportunity provided for fourth-year undergraduate students in the CLS program to explore the fun and complexity of social science research before graduation. For most students who took the class, it was their first hands-on experience with empirical research in the four years of undergraduate education.
 
I greatly enjoy teaching this course as it enables me to get to know the students well and guide them through some exciting projects. From the pedagogical perspective, however, the course is unlike anything I had taught before in my teaching career. About half of the sessions are co-taught with a parallel course “Research Projects in Sociology” (SOC439), when the two classes meet together with two instructors. As a result, I was able to learn much from my UTM sociology colleagues Hae Yeon Choo and Kristin Plys on research methods and student mentoring. Selecting the right readings, however, is a difficult task as the purpose of the readings is different in every class. As a strong believer that the best academic writings speak for themselves, I did not use any textbook but assigned 2-3 journal articles in those sessions that focus on how to frame a research question, how to write a literature review, how to discuss data and methods, etc. Some readings are in the area of crime and law, while others are more general articles in sociology to accommodate the co-teaching needs. Students are told to pay attention to the form rather than the content of the readings and asked to write a reading response reflecting upon the topic of the session. As the class size is limited to no more than 15 students, class discussions are informal and focus on situating the readings in the context of the topic of the day (e.g., literature review).
 
But the most exciting and enjoyable part of the course is to guide students into the field. Many students were interested in the criminal justice system and thus they picked research topics such as racial profiling in policing, attitudes towards capital punishment, the production of space in prisons, job satisfaction of correctional officers, gender and racial discriminations in the police force, and so on. As a sociologist of law, I was also delighted to see some students study classic sociolegal topics such as lawyers and the jury. While a few students used archival research, survey, or experiment as their primary methods, the majority of them conducted in-depth interviews and/or participant observation for their projects in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA).
 
Fieldwork presents many challenges. Some parts of the legal system are simply inaccessible to undergraduate researchers. For example, one student originally thought she could go into prisons for interviews or at least speak to prisoners on the phone. Not surprisingly, she had to adjust her research design and focus on ex-prisoners and family members instead. Another student tried hard to contact police officers in multiple offices, including the campus police, for interviews without much success, as most police officers were very busy when on duty. Eventually, through her contacts in the police force, she complemented her small number of interviews with a survey via email, which enabled her to reach a larger sample of officers.
 
There is also the issue of research ethics. While a course-based ethics approval is obtained for the whole class every year, due to the large variety of student projects, how to make sure undergraduate researchers stick to their ethics protocols in the field is a major challenge. This requires not only introducing the ethical requirements of human subject research to students as a group, such as the importance of informed consent and confidentiality, but also many one-on-one consultations on specific issues arising in the process of research. There were even two occasions when I, as the faculty supervisor, received complaints from community organizations or residents about student behavior – fortunately, both turned out to be misunderstandings.
 
After fieldwork, data analysis and paper writing present additional challenges. Like in any class, there is a range in the students’ ability in research and writing throughout the year. One student conducted a survey smoothly, only to realize that she forgot most of her statistical training and did not know how to analyze the data. In this situation, I asked a classmate of hers, who was the stats wizard in the class, to help her out. Another student did some extraordinary ethnographic work, but the first draft of his paper was mostly theoretical and philosophical discussions and presented little data from the field. I had to walk him through some of his field notes to figure out how to tell a good story and be truthful to the research subjects. These surprises kept reminding me of a general weakness in our undergraduate education, that is, the curriculum often gives the social science majors very little hands-on training in both empirical research and writing. This Research Project course is one of the few opportunities for some of them to develop these practical research skills.
 
As this course is part of UTM Sociology Department’s Peel Social Lab (PSL), a research platform aimed to develop a repository data on the Peel region (where the UTM campus is located) that can be used by researchers and the community, students are encouraged to write a blog post for the PSL’s blog in addition to their final papers to disseminate their findings. I was delighted to see some creative and thought-provoking essays written by my students posted on the PSL’s blog Peel Urbanscapes and reached the general public in the past two years. It was a great way to showcase the quality and potential of undergraduate student research in UTM’s Criminology, Law and Society Program and the Sociology Department.

Many students are looking for hands-on experience with research, but it’s often hard for them to know how to start. It can also be difficult for faculty to shepherd them through the process. Other students may not be actively looking for research experiences, but can benefit from them all the same. As a recent post by Danielle Rudes points out, there are many paths to creating good experiences with research for undergraduate students. In this post, we want to discuss an approach that can be implemented in a wide range of classes, with a wide range of students: incorporating significant research components into regular substantive courses. We also offer advice and evaluations from two undergraduate students, Joseph Buttino and Jeremy Carr, who participated in our approach.

For the past two years, we have given hundreds of students at our university the opportunity to get hands-on experience conducting and analyzing qualitative interviews and constructing, collecting, and analyzing quantitative surveys. We are also using the student-collected data for a research project of our own. Here’s how we did it:

We first worked together to come up with a broad research idea that would be applicable to both of our courses (Criminology for Mary Nell and Juvenile Justice for Ashley). We decided that both sets of students could collect data on juvenile offending and perceptions of juvenile offenders. We then obtained IRB approval for the project, including permission to consider all of our enrolled students (approximately 100 students per course per semester) as research assistants, provided they completed the CITI online human subjects training course. In each course, the CITI course completion counted towards a small component of their final grade (2.5-5%).


Qualitative Project


For the Criminology course where students would be doing qualitative interviews, Ashley and Mary Nell worked together to develop an interview guide, leaving space for students to probe and include their own questions. Mary Nell devoted one full 90-minute class period to interviewer training and gave students time in class to practice interviewing and troubleshoot any concerns. Students had to conduct and record interviews with two people, transcribe their interviews verbatim, then write a course paper that incorporated the interviews and applied criminological theory. They submitted the transcripts, the audio recordings, their course paper, and a summary of the interview experience, including their evaluation of whether the person they interviewed took the interview seriously, how well they thought they did as an interviewer, and how they established rapport. Students each interviewed two people, so by the end of each semester, we had 200 fully transcribed interviews ready for analysis.

We tweaked this project over the course of three semesters. Some changes we made were related to IRB -- the first semester, IRB insisted that students interview strangers, which did not work out very well. We discovered that the “sweet spot” was for students to interview someone they knew casually, or a friend of a friend, rather than a complete stranger or a very close friend. We also learned which kinds of questions worked better than others. Students do not start out as very good interviewers, so when we had a string of questions in the interview guide, meant to be probes or follow ups, students would read all of the questions at once rather than wait for responses in between. We also added the requirement that students add their own interview questions in each section so that they could focus the interview on a theory or concept that they were especially interested in. Our first semester of data was not usable for our own research, there were just too many problems with the questions, topics, and interview techniques. So we would definitely recommend having a semester to pilot the interviews before keeping the interview data to use for your own purposes. However, students still learned a good amount from the process. The day that students hand in their papers, we spend part of class summarizing their experiences, what they learned, and what they would change or do differently next time. We also glean some of this information from the questionnaires they fill out after their interviews. Almost all students enjoy the project and feel like they learn more about the research process and the theories that guide the course. As two examples, undergraduate students Joe Buttino and Jeremy Carr write about their experience:


Joe’s Perspective: Through the Criminology project, I learned a great deal about proper interview techniques and how to conduct a quality interview. When analyzing my two interviews, I was excited to apply criminological theory. For example, Cohen and Felson’s “chemistry of crime” [routine activities theory] proved helpful in understanding my respondents’ rationale for their delinquent behavior, and labeling theory helped me understand other people’s responses to their behavior. My final paper was a culmination of the theories I learned in class and their real-world application to young people my age. The focus on my peers was refreshing because it overlapped with my own academic interests of understanding generational differences between Millennials and Gen Z.

Jeremy’s Perspective: The qualitative Criminology project is one of my favorites during my undergrad career and was helpful in preparing me for a sociology graduate program. In the prep work for the project, I learned about the utility of different sampling strategies, and through the process of conducting the interviews, I learned to be reflexive about my own standpoint and biases. Further, when interviewing a friend, the strengths and weaknesses of having an insider status quickly became apparent. In analyzing my interviews, my main takeaway was that one criminological theory cannot explain all aspects of delinquent and criminal behavior. Rather, a web of theories can offer more insight into explaining behavior and others’ responses to it.


Quantitative Project

In Ashley’s Juvenile Justice course, students completed the key components of a quantitative survey project, from literature review through data presentation. When paired with the main course text, an ethnography by Victor Rios, the survey project allowed students to compare the utility of different methods for studying juveniles and juvenile justice. The project had several checkpoints, some of which were completed in groups. Students began the project by identifying broad topics of interest and potential research questions in small groups. Based on these group topics, each student completed a short annotated bibliography and shared with their group the key takeaways. Each group then honed their research question, developed a simple hypothesis informed by their collective literature review, and wrote survey questions that would enable them to test their hypothesis. Ashley then added these survey questions to a Google Forms pre-existing survey developed in collaboration with Mary Nell. This ensured comparability of survey data across semesters while still allowing each class to add their own questions and test their unique hypotheses. Each student was responsible for distributing the survey and obtaining at least 10 survey respondents, resulting in about 1000 respondents for the full class each semester. Upon completion of data collection, students tested their hypotheses and prepared a policy brief or presentation to describe the findings and their implications as they related to theory and practice.

Because the project was labor intensive and student preparation for it varied widely, Ashley modified its structure slightly each semester to maximize student learning and minimize chaos. From this trial and error came several successful changes. First, any required group work was minimal and took place in class. Students also completed peer evaluations of their group members to hold one another accountable. Second, the number of hypotheses actually tested was reduced to 3-4 per class (rather than 1 per group) by holding a small competition in which each group presented its hypothesis and made a case for why it was important to test. The class then voted on which hypotheses were most interesting, and only the survey questions relevant to this narrowed set of hypotheses were added to the final survey. Consistent with the limits of cross-sectional survey research, hypotheses were also required to be very basic (e.g. Young people who report more X will also report more Y). Finally, it was important to gauge students’ quantitative skills and/or familiarity with Microsoft Excel or other analytic software before requiring them to analyze data. Most students, Ashley discovered, lacked any familiarity with Excel and had difficulty forming basic cross tabs or descriptive statistics. Walking through the data analysis in class for the 3-4 hypotheses proved a much better use of student and faculty time than having students attempt data analysis on their own. Students were still responsible for interpreting and presenting the results in their final write-ups.

As with any class project, some students were more invested in the survey project than others. Most students, though, seemed engaged and interested to learn if the survey data supported their hypotheses (as demonstrated by class cheers when a hypothesis was supported). Students consistently developed interesting hypotheses that applied and extended course material. For example, some students in the most recent semester were interested in understanding how high school security measures (e.g. school resource officers, active shooter drills, random searches, security cameras, etc.) were related to student feelings of safety on campus. Other students were interested in understanding how juvenile interactions with police were related to university students’ perceptions of campus police. Because hypotheses were grounded in theory and existing literature, students connected with the material in new ways and learned applied skills -- like data management, sampling, and survey writing -- in the process.


Joe’s Perspective: The Juvenile Justice survey project piqued my interest in quantitative data analysis. I was quite curious before the beginning of the course but I did not yet have the opportunity to collect or analyze quantitative data. Because I had already taken Dr. Trautner’s class and knew a little about the complementary survey project, I was able to formulate interesting questions and hypotheses for my class to test with this year’s survey. For example, I proposed, and my class agreed, that it would be interesting and relevant to test how the presence of metal detectors and other high-security interventions in elementary and high school were related to students’ self-reported levels of fear in college. I was excited to find patterns in the survey data that supported criminology theory and also to have interview data to provide a more nuanced take on these patterns. The project allowed me to learn the basics of survey data analysis in Excel and STATA and, together with Dr. Trautner’s project, to see the benefit of a mixed methods approach.

Jeremy’s Perspective: Professor Barr’s approach to the Juvenile Justice survey project was unique, and I would encourage other instructors to implement a similar approach. Rather than proposing an easy and predictable topic for a passing grade, the in-class competition to narrow our hypotheses encouraged us to propose a more interesting and relevant research question and hypothesis. Further, because our class simply added to a preexisting survey and we analyzed the results as a group in class, we were able to spend the majority of project time discussing methods and theory and understanding why we found the results we did. If we had to start the survey from scratch or analyze the data on our own, my classmates and I likely would have spent the majority of the project simply figuring out how to create a survey or navigate Excel to show our results. Finally, many sociology students acknowledge that there are problems in society and spend a lot of class time understanding these problems. Yet we rarely are asked to think about how to fix them. Professor Barr asked us to do the latter. During my semester, we were prompted to use theory and our survey results to complete a policy brief relevant to our own university. This allowed students to get their feet in the door of change and to recognize their own agency.


Outside the Classroom

Really engaged students might want to work more closely with the data than just doing two interviews or testing very basic hypotheses with survey data. In our case, we hired two students (Joe and Jeremy) to work as research assistants on the project. Joe also used a subset of the data for an Honor’s project.


Joe’s Perspective: During my first year in college, I had the unique opportunity to work closely with Dr. Trautner on a different qualitative project and with Dr. Barr in a small seminar class, so I was excited to be selected as an RA on their joint project. My work on this project has formalized my training in basic and intermediate research methods. In addition to the interview and survey skills acquired through coursework, I learned the basics of constructing codebooks, cleaning and analyzing data, and working with others to establish interrater reliability. The project has also allowed me to improve my critical thinking skills by understanding the sociological context of deviance and crime. I put all of these new skills to use in the form of an Honors Contract paper entitled “Perceptions of Delinquency among College Students and Non-students.” This paper draws upon the blinded survey and interview data collected in prior semesters of Dr. Trautner’s and Dr. Barr’s classes to examine differences in how young people rationalize their own and others’ adolescent delinquency. This paper has secured me a spot in the American Sociological Association’s Honors Program at their annual meeting this year in New York City, and I also won the Undergraduate Paper Prize from the ASA’s Sociology of Law section. Although my career intentions are a bit unclear at the moment, I am excited to explore sociology further and network with other students at this year’s conference.

Jeremy’s Perspective: Having the opportunity to be involved in the nit and grit of these two projects as an RA has provided me experience in collaboration with other research assistants to function on a professional level. I have become much more interested in conducting my own research after being exposed to the raw process of analyzing and organizing data. I intend to use methods I have learned in my RA position to construct my Master’s thesis when I being graduate studies in the fall. Expanding my interview analysis to 400 interviews (versus 2 for class) allowed for a better assessment of patterns and more consistent application of theory. I will be furthering my education at the University at Buffalo in the fall of 2019 to pursue an MA in sociology with a focus in criminology, and this decision was partly inspired by my involvement as an RA. Further, my research assistantship with Professors Trautner and Barr served as a focus for my statement of purpose when applying to graduate programs and, I believe, was a selling point on my CV.

For all students, we gave them advice on how they could frame the experience they gained on their resume to highlight to future employers. We circulated our assignments to career counselors at our university’s career services office, who then turned the assignments into bullet
points that could be put on a resume. We then gave these to students as examples should they wish to use them.

For example, here are the suggestions the career counselor made for the interview project for language they could include on a resume:

Interview-based social research, Spring 2018
• Collaborated with lead faculty to locate, recruit and interview 2 people on their experiences with, and others’ reactions to illegal juvenile behavior.
• Conducted two 60-minute interviews and demonstrated strong attention to detail by accurately transcribing responses
• Completed 3-hour tutorial to learn effective and ethical practices on conducting research with human subjects
• Analyzed and summarized interviewee responses and applied knowledge of criminological theory in 6-page written paper

We have both really enjoyed incorporating research components into our substantive courses. Students are able to see the practical value of course concepts while building their resumes and developing an appreciation for empirical work. Our approach allows all students to benefit, and for especially interested or advanced students to gain even further experience.

​I have taught in the Criminal Justice program at Weber State University, a regional comprehensive university in northern Utah, for six years. As a sociologist in a criminal justice department, I weave discussions about inequalities in the criminal justice system into all of my courses. This is not an easy task in part because our students tend to be politically conservative and hesitant to speak up in class. Furthermore, my students are hesitant to talk about race and racial inequalities because they don’t have the language to talk about these topics and they are afraid to say the wrong thing. Students who disagree with their peers also tend to stay quiet as illustrated by one student who told me in office hours that she never spoke up in class because she disagreed with the majority of what her peers were saying. These dynamics can easily produce classroom environments in which students stay quiet while their professors either avoid conflict by lecturing for the entire class period or ask thought-provoking questions that elicit blank stares rather than conversation. The teaching strategies I have developed for addressing issues of inequalities in my courses help avoid these types of scenarios. In this post, I focus on a few such strategies I use in my undergraduate upper-division Law and Society course.
 
On the first day of class, I begin creating a safe space for students to express a variety of opinions by introducing them to the idea that minority opinions and unexpected answers can foster more productive conversations than “right” or expected answers. I tell students that I’m going to call on one of them to give a wrong or unexpected answer to a simple question. Then, I call on a student and ask, “What color is the sky?” Instead of the standard answer of “blue,” students have given a variety of answers including brown, purple, and orange. With this seemingly wrong answer out there, I then ask the class, “Under what conditions could the sky actually be [brown, purple, orange]?” This simple exercise has led to ten-minute conversations on various topics including pollution, sunrises and sunsets, and wildfires. At the end of the short discussion, I point out to students that whereas the standard answer of blue would have provoked nods and little to no discussion, the unexpected answer gave us the opportunity to have a thought-provoking discussion about the color of the sky. This, I tell them, is why I encourage answers and opinions that challenge consensuses that arise during class discussions. After leading them through this exercise, I present the students with our overarching critical thinking question for the entire course: “What’s wrong with this picture?” Throughout the semester, whenever we have an apparent consensus on the topic of the day, I return to our guiding question to allow students who may not agree with the consensus to express their views and, more generally, to facilitate students’ thinking about alternative perspectives on the topic.
 
The exercises on the first day prime students for the second day of class in which I lead a workshop on how to discuss issues of race and racial inequalities. I provide an online module of readings and videos about racial oppression, privilege, and how to talk about controversial subjects. Before class, students read a blog post on how to disagree, choose a reading and a video to watch from the module, and then bring to class an explanation of one thing they learned, one thing that surprised them, and one question they still have about the information they’ve read and watched. I begin class with a freewrite and discussion on why it’s difficult to talk about race. During the discussion, students often express their fears about not knowing what to say or how to say it, not wanting to offend other students, and having different perspectives than the majority of students in the class. White students tend to mention their feelings of guilt and being blamed when it comes to talking about privilege. The discussion also provides opportunities for students to discuss why issues of racial inequality provoke such strong emotions and how we might have productive conversations in class in light of those emotions. Overall, the discussion lays the groundwork for talking about how to disagree in ways that promote constructive conversation.
 
After discussing why it’s difficult to talk about race, I ask students to form small groups to talk about the written reflections they’ve brought to class. Because students could choose from a variety of materials to watch and read, I ask them to find other students who watched and read material different from what they chose. Then, they explain the main ideas of their readings and videos to their peers before discussing what they learned, what surprised them, and the questions they still have. I let students discuss on their own for a few minutes before circulating among the groups to provide input where necessary.
 
These strategies get students talking about an uncomfortable topic that they usually avoid. By having these conversations on the first days of class, I signal to students that I welcome dissenting viewpoints while also giving them an opportunity to practice skills for discussing social inequalities that provoke ideological splits and strong emotions. Throughout the multiple semesters in which I’ve taught my Law and Society course in this way, I have found that starting with the exercises and workshop on multiple perspectives and how to talk about race opens the classroom space to more productive conversations throughout the semester. In these conversations, students bring up dissenting viewpoints and question their peers’ perspectives more often than in semesters when I have not provided the foundation for these discussions during the first week of class.

The Law and Society (LWS) major at John Jay College of Criminal Justice currently has over six hundred undergraduate students. The majority of our students are from underrepresented populations, including working-class and immigrant students of color. These students therefore live on a daily basis in the social worlds Law & Society scholars seek to understand. 
 
In 2019, the LWS faculty launched a new initiative aimed at bringing the experiences of our students to a broader audience. We were honored to receive a Presidential Faculty/Student Research Collaboration Award from John Jay College to support the preliminary phase of this project, which will work with student focus groups to define the research priorities of their communities, as students understand them. We broadly envision that the project will involve students in collecting primarily qualitative data from their home communities throughout the five boroughs and the broader metropolitan area.
 
Since all LWS majors are required to take a Senior Research Colloquium, there is an opportunity to use the research projects from that course in the development of this new project. The Research Colloquium requires students to conduct primary research about how law operates in their social worlds, and how people respond. Our students have relationships that they use to build authentic trust in pursuit of mutually beneficial research, making possible a more socially embedded and responsive form of research that is, up to now, rare in Law & Society. Many students produce work of remarkable insight, and the strongest projects each semester could be developed into publishable work with sufficient support. A few recent examples include:
 

• An interview-based study of how non-Latinx as compared to Latinx undocumented immigrants manage the public display of their undocumented status;
• An oral history of how the “dollar vans” in West Indian communities of Brooklyn were legalized after operating illegally for years;
• An ethnographic study of how prison inmates who have sought parole multiple times navigate parole board hearings.
• An interview-based study on how women of color navigate office policies on hairstyles and personal style within professional environments.
  
• An oral history of how bodega owners in the gentrifying neighborhood of Washington Heights interact with police when conflicts arise in public spaces.
  
• An interview-based study of how DACA-mented students take their immigration status into account when making educational and career decisions. 
• An interview-based study of how men accepted plea bargains because they understood the system to be built against them thanks to their income level and skin color.

 
The Research Colloquium is only one piece of the way this project could be streamlined with the major requirements. Additional contributions could occur through assignments in classes, paid student research assistantships, or both. For example, a project on gentrification could ask students in our new 300-level Law in the City course, currently under development, to collect observational and photographic data on changing streetscapes in their neighborhoods throughout the metropolitan area. Meanwhile, students working as paid research assistants and trained in human subjects protection could perform interviews with different stakeholders in key neighborhoods. Research outputs could take the form of articles, a book, and/or an edited volume. We anticipate that publications from this project would be sole- or co-authored by students.
 
A great deal of research in Law and Society focuses on working-class communities of color like the ones our students call home, but the research is almost always conducted by outsiders. In this research project, our students will help design and conduct the project from the ground up. The project is structured around the principle that no one understands oppressive systems better than those who are oppressed by them. By placing John Jay students at the center of the research and letting them drive its direction, the project will provide a unique perspective not available in conventional research conducted by outsiders.