Public Affairs 5120: Social Change Advocacy: Organization, Mobilization and Activism

• Classmate and Course Engagement, including: instructor exchange (5%), weekly questions (20%), and spontaneous engagement (5%): 30%
• Advocacy Portfolio Proposal: 10%
• Portfolio Development: Understand the Issue: 20%
• Portfolio Development: Understand the Field: 20%
• Final Advocacy Portfolio: 20%

This is an asynchronous online course. Content is organized in weekly modules. Each Carmen content module includes an Overview page, a Readings and Media section, a section on “getting information and ideas” (i.e. the primary course content), and section on Application, Dialogue, and Reflection, which includes any assignments due.

To maximize schedule flexibility for students, modules will be open on a rolling basis roughly two weeks ahead of the calendar date. Carmen modules will generally open on Monday or Tuesday two weeks ahead of the current week. This means that students may work up to two weeks ahead of the calendar date in order to maximize their productive time and work around work, school, and personal schedules.

Optional weekly synchronous AMA (ask me anything) sessions are offered via Zoom for students who would like to discuss the course content with the instructor and classmates. See the first page of this document for Zoom link and times. These are informal discussion sessions intended to enrich the course by building bonds between participants and creating unstructured time to talk advocacy, current events, and - if participants are so inclined - to dig a little deeper into the course content. Individual concerns and detailed discussions of student work can be scheduled during online office hours by appointment as needed. Please reach out! 

Note that at least one “instructor exchange” is required for all course participants. See course grade requirements below for more details. 

Most assignments will close on Sunday night at 11:59pm each week, but nothing prevents a student from submitting early (i.e., once an assignment opens). For instance, if a student plans to try to avoid course work on the weekends, they may finish the coursework and assignments and submit them Thursday or Friday before they are formally due. 

Submit your assignments in Carmen by the due date and times specified in the assignment instructions. Although I am sure that plagiarism will not be a problem, all written assignments will be filtered through Turnitin. 

Instructor Exchange (5%)

At least one “instructor exchange” is required for all course participants. The purpose of this assignment is twofold: to create personal connections between you (the student) and me (the instructor) in an online format, so that we get to know each other just a little bit, and to practice a skill essential to advocacy: reaching out to and getting to know people in power (in this case, the person who controls the class and your grade!). There are several ways to satisfy this course requirement, including but not limited to: 

• attending and directly engaging (i.e., participating in discussion) in an AMA session (or multiple sessions) wherein you interact with the instructor and the group as a whole at least twice (e.g. ask two thoughtful questions or offer two thoughtful replies to others’/the instructor’s questions);
• scheduling and attending a one-on-one meeting with the instructor via office hours (online or in-person); 
• engaging in an intellectually substantive email or other written discussion exchange with the instructor by way of your weekly question that includes, at a minimum, two thoughtful posts/messages from you (e.g., an initial post or email from you, an instructor response, and then your reply to the instructor response; or, an initial post or email from the instructor, your reply, an instructor response, and your reply to that instructor response).

You are not required to reflect upon, write about, or turn in any deliverable related to your instructor exchange; engaging in the exchange is all that’s required. You are also not limited in the number of instructor exchanges you can participate in – you can engage with the instructor as much as you want! – but only one exchange will count for course credit. (I.e., you cannot get extra credit by engaging with the instructor more – although, the most engaged students do often end up with higher grades.) The instructor exchange requirement cannot be met by simply complying with other course requirements: attendance at a required synchronous session (if there are any), posting to a discussion forum, conducting a peer review, or emailing to ask about due dates or other logistical matters do not fulfill this requirement. To count as an instructor exchange, the exchange must be above and beyond logistical questions and other course requirements. That said, an initial inquiry about a simple course concept or assignment could easily mushroom into an “official” instructor exchange!

Weekly Question (20%)

One way to think of this section of your grade is as a participation grade plus a reading check. Not every week, but most weeks, you will be required to ask a question about the reading or course content for that week, and offer a brief annotation explaining your thinking behind the question. Think of each of these two parts as a component of your grade: Each question itself earns you 1% of your total grade, each annotation another 1%. Over the course of the semester, you will post 10 question-annotation pairs; in total, that will add up to 20% of your grade. The questions and annotations will be graded on completion, more or less: a thoughtful question and annotation that demonstrates intellectual curiosity and genuine course engagement will earn you a full 1% for each. A superficial or generic question or annotation that does not demonstrate thoughtfulness or engagement will earn you half credit (0.5% for each), and of course if you post nothing at all, you’ll earn 0%.

Spontaneous Engagement (5%)

I have never found “forced” discussion board replies to be particularly rich in online courses – they create artificial discussions that can sometimes be interesting, but often leave a lot to be desired. The beauty of rich thoughtful discussion is that it is self-driven: it evolves organically and from your heart and mind – not because the professor told you to talk/post. But, it is also the case that engagement matters: more peer-to-peer exchange in a course makes it richer and helps drive learning forward. 

To try to strike the balance between organic discussion and ensuring cross-peer learning and exchange, in this class, five times over the course of the semester – any five times you want! - I ask that you respond to any one of your classmates’ weekly questions and annotations. You can respond to anyone’s question any time, and you can respond to every person’s questions, every week – there is no limit! But at least five times over the course of the semester, you need to respond to someone who made you think, who piqued your interest, got your blood pumping – whatever! Each time you do, for the first five of those responses, your response will earn you 1% of your grade. The idea is to encourage cross-peer engagement and learning, but not to force you to engage when you don’t feel like or are uninterested or are having an off week or whatever. 

For absolute clarity, only initial replies to different classmates (the “initial-replies-to-separate-people-rule”) in any given week count for your spontaneous engagements. Long threads of replies with a single person – in essence, a conversation – only count for one engagement. But your engagements do not have to be on different weeks – you can reply to five different people on the same week and that counts; that’s fine if you fina a bunch of people’s comment really interesting in a given week. Further, the initial-replies-to-separate-people-rule, noted above, only applies within a week. If you want, you can reply to the same person five times in five different weeks – that also counts.

You might be taking this class because you care deeply about a given social issue, or perhaps several, and you want to learn more about how to advocate for change around those issues. Or, perhaps you feel like you might like to go into advocacy work, but you’re not sure what you’d like to focus on and are just curious about how advocacy works. No matter which characterization describes you – and there may be other characterizations, too! - you will be better positioned to learn about and understand social change advocacy if you can think through, read about, and learn from a concrete, real-world example.

This introductory assignment is a written statement that provides a starting point for your project in this course, which will culminate with the creation of an advocacy portfolio. The statement should include: 

• A definition of your selected problem and its scope (global, federal, state, local)
• Why this is an important issue to you personally (i.e., motivational narrative)
• What you already know about the issue
• A plan for completion of the portfolio development assignments
  • Planned sources for the Understand the Issue and Understand the Field assignments
  • Planned piece of advocacy for the final portfolio

(Graduate Students 2 pages single-spaced; Undergraduate Students 1 page single-spaced.)

There are two assignments intended to assist in continuing to develop your advocacy portfolio, which is due at the end of the semester. You will submit these assignments for feedback from the instructor and make revisions for inclusion in your portfolio at the end of the semester. 

There are multiple ways to approach these assignments depending on the social issue you are focused upon. The below provides some ideas but should not be considered exhaustive of all the ways to approach these assignments. (Graduate Students 2 pages single-spaced; Undergraduate Students 1 page single-spaced)

1. Understand the Issue:
The purpose of this assignment is for you to expand your current understanding of the issue by summarizing the data and evidence available. The data and evidence could describe the problem, how
the problem has evolved or been addressed historically, how the problem is being framed in public discourse, or potential solutions to the problem, among other topics. The assignment should review the most relevant data available and describe how it is relevant to advocacy work.

You should draw on your current knowledge as well as at least two of the below (or proposed alternatives):

• Reading at least three peer-reviewed papers on the issue (that you haven’t read before)
• Reading at least one credible polling report on the issue (that you haven’t read before)
• Interviewing a researcher who studies the issue or listening to a podcast with such a researcher
• Watching a documentary on the issue (that you haven’t seen before)
• Interviewing a member of the public about their opinions on the issue

2. Understand the Field:
The purpose of this assignment is for the student to understand the actors involved in their social issue, as well as the strategies and tactics that have worked for these actors. The assignment should
include a policy field map of actors and their relationships to one another. It could also address how different actors frame the issue or the strategic repertoire of different actors, among other topics. The assignment should provide a thorough description of the strategic action field and describe how it affects advocacy work.

You should draw on your current knowledge as well as at least two of the below (or proposed alternatives):

• Searching online (e.g., Guidestar) for organizations involved in the issue
• Attending an advocacy-related event and reflecting on who was involved and how they interacted
• Interviewing an advocate for the issue or listening to a podcast with such an advocate
• Reading a book/article documenting historical progress on the issue (that you haven’t read
• before)
• Attending a museum exhibit documenting historical progress on the issue (that you haven’t seen before)

(Graduate Students 8 pages single-spaced; Undergraduate Students 5 pages single-spaced)

Your portfolio should include:

• Introduction to the issue and a personal narrative of its importance to you
• Understanding of the Issue (previously submitted, but revised)
• Understanding of the Field (previously submitted, but revised)
• A piece of advocacy; choice of (or proposed alternative):
  • Writing a persuasive op-ed
  • Writing a persuasive letter to your legislator
  • Posting to social media about your issue, reflecting on the experience
  • Meeting with a legislator (or staffer), reflecting on the experience
• A reflection on: 1) what you have learned through this class and its assignments; 2) where you believe you fit into the network of actors based on your interests, strengths, and theory of change; 3) how you plan to engage in future work in this area, including further preparing yourself as a tool for social change. 

Grading

Your final portfolio grade will be based on the quality of your introductory essay, the organization and presentation of the work overall, the quality of your post-peer review revisions, and quality of the work included taken in its totality. No peer review is required.