Putting It All Together: Strategies for Teaching Theory to Community College Students

Presented by Diana Rickard (Social Sciences, Human Services, and Criminal Justice)

This presentation will focus on a multi-faceted final semester assignment for BMCC students. Designed to “put it all together”, it requires students to analyze an instance of entertainment media by engaging with sociological and criminological theory.

After lectures and discussion on media and society, students select a specific example of entertainment media that in some way involves a crime issue and submit a proposal. They can choose any form of entertainment media (e.g. a TV series, a specific episode of a series, a movie, a video game, or comic book, etc;) and identify the type of crime or crime issue depicted. After receiving feedback on their proposal, they submit a 1-2 page description of what they have selected. To help students deconstruct analytic elements (as opposed to descriptive), an in-class workshop is then conducted, which allows students to articulate the ways victims, offenders, and the criminal justice system are portrayed; to discuss how one or more theories are relevant to the media piece; and to explore the impact the piece may have on viewers. After the workshop students submit a short reflection piece on the significance of their ideas, engaging broader issues related to criminal justice and social control. At the end of the semester they participate in group presentations and discussion, and submit a final paper. Students have expressed excitement with both being able to work with something that has immediate relevance to them and being able to demonstrate their mastery of course material. Examples of worksheets and other artifacts will be presented, as will questions about improving the project.

RSVP to cetls@bmcc.cuny.edu.

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