FIG REPORT: Civic Responsibility
Spring 2012
Report Author: Sara Parker
FACULTY PARTICIPANTS
Aldrian Estepa, Psychology
Rae Ann Iannello, Communication Studies and Business
Kristin Land, English, Puente Program
Clara McLean, English, Service Learning
Christina Mendoza, Sociology
Sara Parker, Political Science
Andrew Pierson, Psychology
christine warda, Communication Studies
Zac Walsh, English
Observers: David Rigunay, Associated Students of Chabot College Senator, Keith
Stiver, Director of Campus Safety and Security
AREA OF INQUIRY
In Spring 2012, nine Chabot faculty members from six different disciplines
participated in a Faculty Inquiry Group (FIG) to discuss the integration of Civic
Responsibility into their teaching practices and to assess student learning.
Civic Responsibility is one of the five College-wide Learning Goals. It is defined as,
“Informed citizenship in a democracy”, including “cultural, economic, political, and
historical” citizenship and “promoting the development of values, integrity, and
ethical behavior.”
OVERVIEW
The participants met over the course of the semester in order to achieve the
following:
 a common understanding of the ways we define and approach teaching civic
responsibility
 agree upon a rubric that incorporated our myriad understandings
 develop unique assessment tools to be used in our respective classrooms
during the semester to measure student learning on civic responsibility
 follow up with each other to consider the projects, assignments, or
assessments used and the results garnered
 compile a set of recommendations to support and facilitate college-wide
success in achieving the campus wide learning goal
The final rubric is attached. Table 1 (below) is a summary of the assessments that
were implemented.
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Table 1: Summary of Assessments
SLO
Instructor/Course
1. Understand
Aldrian
and value
Estepa/Social
diversity of
Psychology
communities and
cultures
2. Ability to
analyze civic
engagement
concepts
Overview of Assessment
Students will develop a measure of “explicit prejudice”
as it relates to a group (based on sexual orientation,
ethnicity, etc.). They will correlate this measure with
an individual’s scores on the Implicit Attitudes Test
and prepare a presentation to share their results with
the class. Students will then reflect upon the activity
in a 1 page report on some of the challenges they
faced, what they would change next time, what their
attitudes used to be and how they have changed.
Kristin Land/Puente Students will consider Mario Barrera’s theory of
structural inequality in relation to modern day
English 1A
business practices that impact indigenous people’s
rights. Students will also reflect upon Eduardo
Galeano’s notion of solidarity as it relates to the allies
that support an indigenous community’s struggle for
sovereignty. Students will consider ways to participate
courageously in activities that promote justice. Course
readings emphasize principles of non-violent forms of
protest and weigh tactics for dissent.
Students will go as a performance team into some
christy warda/
location in the community to break or challenge a
Introduction to
social, cultural norm. For example: talking about
Performance Studies eating steak with their hands at a nice restaurant,
dressing in suits to go play on a playground etc. The
final part of this assignment is in-class presentations
that will be assessed. During the in-class presentation
students will present a version of the performance (at
least describing what the group did) and discuss the
cultural, social ramifications and reactions for their
performance. Instructor will ask students to respond
to and think about what happens when someone
attempts to engage others in reflecting on a
'normalized' practice.
Using the topic of “social class inequality” students
Christina
Mendoza/Introductio will read newspaper articles about the current
educational budget crisis. Students will discuss
n to Sociology
strategies to deal with the increases and actions that
they could take to convince state legislators to
increase funding for public education. Students will
demonstrate understanding of educational constraints
using CW Mills theory of personal and public issues.
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Kristin Land/Puente Students will consider Mario Barrera’s theory of
structural inequality in relation to modern day
English 1A
Sara Parker/
Introduction to
American
Government
Zac Walsh/English
3. Self-reflexive Kristin Land/Puente
upon civic
English 1A
experiences and
personal
relationship to
civic culture
business practices that impact indigenous people’s
rights. Students will also reflect upon Eduardo
Galeano’s notion of solidarity as it relates to the allies
that support an indigenous community’s struggle for
sovereignty.
Students will consider ways to participate
courageously in activities that promote justice. Course
readings emphasize principles of non-violent forms of
protest and weigh tactics for dissent.
Class discussions
Reading Journals
Students are provided brief, contemporary news
articles (as a component of in class exams) and asked
to connect the articles to at least one concept from
American Government. They are scored on their
ability to a) identify the relevance of real world
political dilemmas and on goings to concepts and
topics from class; b) explain those concepts and topics
in their own words as applied to a novel situation.
Students will be assessed on essays that ask them to
connect and compare what they think the American
Dream/Experience should be – and identify the
Presidential candidate in 2012 that they believe most
closely resembles that idea, and why.
Policy Forum Presentation
Reflection
A final paper that offers students more choice of how
to approach civic engagement and is tied to a research
presentation. Students will prepare to participate in a
mock “Policy Forum” in which they will convince
President Obama to fund (or enact) a policy related to
their research. Students may opt to recommend local,
symbolic policies or broader international policies.
Students will compete with other teams of “policy
analysts” for limited financial resources. The exercise
serves as a basis for taking these ideas to a real world
audience.
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4. Utilizes
Rae Ann Iannello
communication /Business
strategies to
Communication
further civic
action
Through an assignment entitled “Civic Responsibility,
Persuasion, and Social Media”, students will reflect on
what it means to be a responsible member of society,
identify ways that social media can be used to
influence others, and develop persuasive and report
writing skills. The assignment asks students to: 1)
select a local non-profit organization to analyze; 2)
write an informal report summarizing the
organization’s current use of social media and
suggesting one addition to the current social media
campaign; 3) summarize what they learned from the
assignment.
5. Demonstrates Andrew Pierson/
independent
Psychological
civic engagement Methodology
and reflection
Students will write a letter demonstrating their ability
to: 1) research a public policy issue; 2) develop a point
of view or position on a matter of public policy related
to psychology; 3) communicate a rationale in support
of a public policy position using peer reviewed
scientific data; 4) research and identify public officials;
5) write a letter addressed to those officials
communicating a point of view or position on a matter
of public policy related to psychology, including a
rationale grounded in published peer reviewed
scientific data.
A focus on civic action will be more explicitly
incorporated, in different ways, into the design
of/instructions for the 5 or 6 reflections that students
will complete between now and the remainder of the
semester. The “reflections” refer to students’ service
learning experiences and their integration of these
experiences with their studies at Chabot, their goals,
and their sense of themselves in the world.
Clara McLean/
Service Learning 85
RESULTS
The following is summary of the comments and insights provided by FIG
participants in discussions, in reflections about their experiences, and in response to
the quantitative assessment results entered in Elumen. The comments are
organized into common themes. Overall, faculty experienced and saw positive
results – speaking to the impact a purposeful focus on civic responsibility in Chabot
courses had on student learning.
I. Shifts in “class narrative” – the ways in which a class considers ideas
becomes more complex, more open-minded, and more empathetic.
- In Zac Walsh’s class, students were asked to write a response to the phrase
“American Dream” at the beginning of the semester. At least 25 students
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wrote about wealth, “living the ‘American Dream’ means that’s [sic] anyone
can be very very rich, in terms of stuff.”
Kristin Land writes, “students did demonstrate their civic identity in
increasingly sophisticated ways.”
A group that participated in christine warda’s assessment resulted in
students discussing how, “non verbal communication impacts public disabled
identities.” “They showed empathy for others and expressed a desire to
continue to resist disabling nonverbal communication with others.”
Though SERV 85 has always been a class explicitly concerned with civic
engagement, tailoring reflection activities for the whole second half of the
course toward a sharper focus on that solicited more complex thinking and
greater coherence from a class that can sometimes feel like a “catch-all” of
students with wildly diverse goals and skills. For example, retooling a typical
SERV 85 end-of-term reflection, “Write a letter to yourself in 20 years: who
do you hope to be/what do you hope to be doing with your life?” so that it
more directly addressed civic engagement (“Envisioning the future: putting
change into action”) brought out some of the most thoughtful reflections that
Clara McLean had ever received, even from the weaker students in the class.
Several students in PSY 3 found the experience of confronting their own
possible homophobia and religious prejudice uncomfortable, but overall
rewarding. One student reported that he was going to take steps to help the
LGBT community because of his work around the IAT. A group that studied
the religious IAT stated that they learned a lot about what terms are
associated with different religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam)
and they became more aware of what some of the prejudices may be—
previously some of these students were very indifferent about religion.
II. The focus on Civic Responsibility gave students a “lens that helped them see
the responsibility they have to their own minds and ideas first” (Walsh).
- A benefit to Rae Ann Iannello’s assignment that, perhaps, went beyond the
goals of the assignment itself was that students gained confidence in their
own ability to provide meaningful advice.
- In christine warda’s class, students pushed themselves to risks that
challenged them to break norms and confront differences.
III. Focus on civic responsibility helps students understand the link between
empirical research, civic engagement, and public policy.
- Students in Andrew Pierson’s class authored advocacy letters to more than
17 public officials regarding 25 different public policy issues. This not only
helped students develop personal positions related to public policy issues,
but furthered the connection between empirical psychological research
presented in class and the role it can play in public policy issues.
- In Kristin Land’s Policy Forum Debates, she found that “students enjoyed this
project not only because they had some choice in the topics, but also because
they cold see the real-world application that a policy debate might have and
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could imagine themselves as professionals engaged in advocating for such
positions.”
In Christina Mendoza’s Sociology class, students were asked to apply theories
or terminology to explain the existence of various contemporary problems
and to come up with potential solutions. While students were able to relate
on a personal level to the problems, they “had trouble thinking of macro
solutions” to major social issues.
This exercise was similar to the assessment done in Sara Parker’s class,
where students were asked to connect political science concepts to
contemporary news articles. Interestingly, students were mostly successful
at being able to make these connections, but found it difficulty to relate the
political issue(s) at stake to their own lives. These results speak to the
multiple layers encapsulated in the idea of civic responsibility, and the
importance of helping students access those ideas in multiple ways and in
multiple subjects.
Several students in PSY 3 did their IAT work around prejudice against the
obese and mention in their reflections about a “fat tax” and overweight
people on airplanes. Their work pointed that their participants were against
“fat tax” but their IAT’s revealed significant preference for skinny people.
This illustrated a disconnect between people’s private (unconscious)
attitudes and what they would actually vote for.
IV. Integrating informal responses and reflections with a focus on civic
responsibility into formal assignments enhance student experience and
success.
- Five of the instructors incorporated some kind of personal response to the
assignment or opportunity to reflect upon what they had learned into the
assignment itself. This seemed to result in providing students with greater
awareness of why the instructor was using this assignment, and how they
hoped the students would benefit from the assignment. This is also a useful
tool for instructors when attempting to assess student learning. Kristin Land
writes, “christy warda encouraged me to think about class discussion and
reading journals as places to look for students’ growing strengths in discreet
areas.”
- SERV 85 only meets on campus one hour per week; the rest of the time
students spend in their various volunteer projects off-site. Because of this
structure, and because their projects are so different depending on their
interests (from volunteering at an animal shelter to tutoring in the schools to
volunteering at the SF Opera, to name a few), building coherence and
community into the classroom can be a challenge. Clara McLean found that
focusing on the unifying theme of civic responsibility in the course
reflections, readings, and discussion activities created a thread that brought
out the best in all students in the class, and helped bridge the academic, class
and cultural divides in the classroom. Students were not merely giving lip
service to the concept, but were envisioning creative ways of improving their
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volunteer sites and articulating visions for long-term change in their
communities.
V. Increased student interest in participating in on campus, community, and
state-wide activism campaigns.
- “The march [March in March] clearly had an impact on at least one
student…She had never attended a protest before. After attending the
protest her interest in being an active community member increased
significantly.”
- Following completion of the assignment in Rae Ann Iannello’s Business
Communication class, one student wrote, “Before beginning this project I
avoided social networking sites and had no knowledge of how they worked. I
thought them to be intimidating and invasive. Yet, through my research I
learned that social networking sites can be very useful tools for the exchange
and archiving of information important to its members. Features included on
sites like Facebook can enhance awareness and connect a community far
easier and more economically than updating a group’s website. As part of
this project I joined Facebook to learn how to navigate the site and will
continue to educate myself about additional uses for social networking
mediums. Another student realized that she could also help an organization
that she supports via social networking, and vowed to do so in the future.
VI. Greater student awareness of political differences and their impact on
relationships.
- During a discussion in christine warda’s class students were “vulnerable and
honest in their discussion about how if you challenge family and cultural
traditions, even voting differently, you risk damaging your family
relationships.”
- Christina Mendoza found a similar result in her class, where students “did
not agree with other members and [therefore] did not know what to write
down as the ‘right answer.’”
- Students in PSY 3 stated that they felt a great deal of discomfort talking to
family members who might have high levels of implicit and explicit prejudice
as measured by their scales. One student stated that she wanted to “tell Mom
that she’s wrong”, but ultimately decided not to.
RECOMMENDATIONS
On aggregate, students performed well on all five SLO assessments. Students also
responded well to the incorporation of a civic responsibility theme. This indicates
that when faculty make this a focal point of their curriculum, we can see strong
evidence of achieving this college wide learning goal. Yet, because this group of
faculty was overtly focused of this goal, the results, while replicable, would not
necessarily be reflected in a broad, untargeted, college wide assessment. For this
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reason, the following is a list of recommendations to pursue widespread success in
achieving the college wide learning goal of civic responsibility.
(1) Develop an institutional webpage for sharing assignment ideas that
incorporate civic responsibility and that can be adapted across disciplines.
(2) Expand the college-wide goal beyond “citizenship in a democracy” to include
contributions to community and stated inclusion of global citizenship.
(3) Engage the idea of citizenship beyond Social Science and Language Arts
divisions through focused cross-disciplinary conversations.
(4) Encourage faculty to include information about Student Government on their
syllabi.
(5) Support campus-wide and institutional efforts to raise civic awareness, such
as voter awareness drives, speaker series, and affiliations with local and
national efforts.
(6) Support campus community-building events and lectures by bringing classes
to events and announcing events regularly in class, on the Chabot web page,
via opt-in text messaging or other means.
(7) Develop a Chabot calendar system that centralizes ALL information about
campus events and makes accessing that information easy for students,
faculty, and staff.
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