Teaching the Town Hall: Incorporating Experiential Learning in a Large Introductory Lecture Course

Abstract

Experiential learning has been shown to help cultivate habits of effective democratic citizens, but it is often seen as infeasible for large classes. This need not be the case. In this paper, we describe a group project designed to introduce students in a 70-person Introduction to Politics course to the basic political processes of local government. In addition to guidance on how to implement the project, we also discuss survey data from students in the class to compare pre- and post-tests for each semester as well as comparing post-tests across two semesters. We explore how students who were enrolled in the course responded to the experiential learning component of the course on three separate dimensions: cognitive development, community awareness, and self-understanding. Ultimately, students reported that they felt civically engaged because they worked directly with community partners who they felt benefited from their involvement (community awareness) and they developed their skills for teamwork and collaboration (self-understanding). Our evaluation suggests that this group-level experiential learning project in a large course can be an effective tool for political science education as well as student development and implementing these kinds of experiential learning interventions can improve with each iteration of the project. Additionally, in light of student feedback, we provide suggestions on how other faculty members teaching large courses could incorporate this project into their own pedagogical practice.

Keywords:

• Civic education
• experiential learning
• large class size
• undergraduate education

Notes

1 The institution is predominantly white (68%) and 59% of students are women. While over 90% of students are enrolled full-time, only 37% of students live in on-campus housing and the majority of students commute to campus. Most students, 72%, are originally from the surrounding counties.

2 In Fall 2016, social work (29.6%) and criminal justice (25%) majors comprised over half the class; only 20% of the course were political science majors, the rest of the class included students from history, business, literature, philosophy, psychology, and undecided majors. In Spring 2017, the proportion of political science majors (16%) decreased, though criminal justice (19.6%) and social work (10.6%) majors were still among the most popular in the class; the rest of the class included students from psychology (9%) and business (9%), as well as communications, economics, environmental science, health science, literature, philosophy, and undecided.

3 In order to get full credit for attending the meeting, students were required to submit a photo of themselves (often ‘selfies’) at the meeting as well as their notes from the meeting. The photos students submitted were not only fun to see, but also often included local elected officials interacting with students—to the surprise and delight of the instructor.

4 Though we found these in-class presentations an effective way to generate informed and engaged discussions of the local political issues facing our region of New Jersey, instructors who may not want to devote the in-class time to presentations may choose to substitute alternative presentation assignments. In Spring 2019, for example, we replaced the in-class presentations with pre-recorded video presentations (of 10–12 minutes) that the students recorded and uploaded to Blackboard. Students were then instructed to watch their peers’ videos and respond via an online discussion forum designed to facilitate the same cross-group comparisons that the in-class discussions generated. While these discussions were often quite interesting, our impression was that they were less effective than traditional face-to-face, synchronous discussions due to the asynchronous nature of the online forum and the resulting lack of direct instructor facilitation of the online discussions.

5 Students’ overall course grade was comprised of the following: 60% exams that tested students’ knowledge of course concepts (three exams at 20% each), 25% from weekly quizzes that tested students’ knowledge of current events (13 quizzes at 1.9% each, with two extra credit opportunities), and the 15% group project. The decision to allocate only 15% of the course grade to the town hall project was made using the best practices suggested by our institution’s Office of Service-Learning. Because the overwhelming majority of students at our institution are commuters, who often work full-time jobs and have family obligations in addition to their responsibilities as full-time students, the 15% allocation was intended to make the project weighty but not so weighty to prevent students from passing the course if they failed to complete the project but were otherwise engaged with course content. Given the time-intensive nature of the project, however, instructors may well choose to increase its point value relative to the rest of the course assignments.

6 Data was collected through the Office of Service-Learning at the University under Institutional Review Board Approval number 2017.086. This particular study was found to be exempt from Institutional Review Board Approval because the data the authors received from the Office of Service-Learning was deidentified for individual students and identifiable only by the course semesters. The deidentified data set is available at www.jenniferforestal.com/research.

7 Table 1 provides a summary of the student respondent demographics as well as the time spent on the experiential learning project in both semesters. Table 2 summarizes the complete findings of these tests.

8 Two of the in-class working days were scheduled for days when the instructor was traveling for conferences. The other two were added to scheduled ‘exam review’ days as a way to ensure that students made use of that class time in the absence of a traditional lecture; the fact that the presence of the instructor was not necessary for students to collaborate effectively, however, indicates strategies for making effective use of unavoidable instructor absences.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Forestal

Jennifer Forestal is Helen Houlahan Rigali Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola University Chicago. Her research examines contemporary democratic practices, with an emphasis on the effects of digital technologies. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in journals such as American Political Science Review, Journal of Politics, Political Studies, and Contemporary Political Theory, as well as media outlets like The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage. At Loyola, she teaches courses in political theory and feminist theory.

Jessie K. Finch

Jessie K. Finch is a Lecturer in Sociology at Northern Arizona University. She studies migration, race and ethnicity, deviance, social psychology, emotions, culture, health, and pedagogy. She has a Ph.D. (2015) and M.A. (2011) in Sociology from the University of Arizona and a B.A. (2007) in Sociology and Music from the University of Tulsa. Jessie has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Teaching Sociology, Race and Social Problems, and Sociological Spectrum and has received grants from the National Science Foundation as well as the American Sociological Association. She is most recently the coeditor of Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert from the University of Arizona Press (2016). She has also taught courses on immigration, race and ethnicity, deviance, research methods, popular culture, and happiness.