Description
Read the article “Engaging Students and their Publics through Making Sociological Films” and watch each of the Ted Talks. At their core, this content represents one of the most popular forms of reaching a public audience – Film. https://youtu.be/XqogaDX48nI?si=vCHXBgQQ6EgT6GgWhttps://youtu.be/f3aW-5qmblY?si=71a6iHaQiaFw3vsBhttps://youtu.be/pQLe5jshjq0?si=oDr4cCJx24n_USECBriefly describe the TedTalk that “spoke to you” the most. What was the sociological importance in each? What type of public audience are the creators hoping to reach? Did any of these introduce something new that was unfamiliar to you? Did it make you curious about something new? Did it make you explore further, search a new topic, read something more? Explain. Filmmaking is another way to reach a public audience. After reading the article, discuss how a Sociomentary and Youtube can become effective forms of public sociology. How does the author describe the filmmaking process in her course and do you think this is a skillset that sociology students should have before graduating?
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research-article2017
JOS0010.1177/1440783316688343Journal of SociologyWaller
Article
Engaging students and their
publics through making
sociological films
Journal of Sociology
2017, Vol. 53(2) 430–444
© The Author(s) 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783316688343
DOI: 10.1177/1440783316688343
journals.sagepub.com/home/jos
Vivienne Waller
Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
Abstract
While sociological learning and teaching is still dominated by the word, students are increasingly
immersed in visual culture. Audio-visuals can be extremely powerful in their ability to communicate
complex messages about the world and are growing in importance as a means of informing
public debate. Recent developments in technology equip anyone with access to a computer or
smartphone with the means to make a film. Getting students to make a short film seemed a way
to cater to diverse skill sets and interests and facilitate authentic learning while simultaneously
engaging students in a form of public sociology. This article examines Sociomentary, a recently
developed undergraduate unit which, underpinned by critical media pedagogy, involved students
in a new form of sociological knowledge production. It contributes to the collective effort of
academics teaching sociology to find ways to engage students more deeply and assist them in
engaging the world.
Keywords
authentic assessment, critical media pedagogy, curriculum innovation, sociological film, teaching
of sociology, visual sociology
‘Prefer making movies to writing essays?’ This was the heading on a lecture slide
designed to advertise the newly developed undergraduate unit ‘Sociomentary’. With
growing competition for students in Australia, teaching academics are increasingly under
pressure to attract students by making their courses more engaging and their assessment
more ‘authentic’ (Ashford-Rowe et al., 2014).
Corresponding author:
Vivienne Waller, Swinburne University of Technology, Mail H53, PO Box 218, Hawthorn, Victoria 3122,
Australia.
Email: [email protected]
Waller
431
While exams have become unfashionable at some universities,1 including my own, the
essay remains a staple part of university education in sociology (ASA Task Force on
Assessing the Undergraduate Sociology Major, 2005) as well as in the humanities
(Andrews, 2003) more broadly. While writing argumentative essays provides students with
training in developing and presenting written arguments, students may see writing them as
a chore, while no one else apart from the marker usually sees them at all. Becker is blunt in
his criticism: ‘undergraduates … write short essays they would not write of their own
choice, in a few weeks, on subjects they know nothing about and aren’t interested in, for a
reader who, as Shaughnessy says, “would not choose to read it if he were not being paid to
be an examiner”’ (in Becker, 2007: x). While Becker may be unduly harsh in his criticism,
the point is that there is scope for sociological assessments other than the exam or the essay.
It was while attending a short course in documentary film-making that my thoughts
first wandered to the idea of engaging students by getting them to make a new genre of
film: the sociomentary. Such a film could provide an authentic learning experience for
students, and simultaneously could be a tool for communicating sociological knowledge
beyond the university.
This article discusses the design of, and the experiences of teaching, Sociomentary, a
unit of study which required students to communicate sociological knowledge in a film.
In this way, this article contributes to the oft neglected discussion about the theory and
practice of teaching sociology to undergraduates in Australia (Harley and Natalier, 2013:
392). It takes up Shulman’s (2004) challenge to share our learnings from our teaching
practice in order that our peers can build on what we have done. McCarthy and Higgs
suggest that such an account of our learnings should comprise ‘some or all of the full act
of teaching – vision, design, enactment, outcomes and analysis – in a manner susceptible
to critical review by the teacher’s professional peers and amenable to productive employment in future work by members of the same community’ (2005: 9). Accordingly, the rest
of the article explains in more detail the context for the vision, the pedagogical rationale
for the unit, its design and enactment as well as the outcomes and the learnings.
Engaging students immersed in a visual culture
According to Shulman (2002), in order to learn, students need first to be motivated to
become engaged. This leads to knowledge and understanding, which in turn enables
performance or action. Students can then critically reflect on their learning, which enables them to constructively deal with uncertainty and constraints. This, in turn, leads to
commitment to the learning and incorporation of it into a student’s identity.
For several decades, sociologists have recognized just how influential film is in
shaping our understanding of the world (Demerath, 1981; Grady, 1991; Tudor, 1974).
Since the advent of the internet, however, our lives are even more saturated with audiovisual content. A 2007 study by the Australian Communications and Media Authority
(ACMA) found that Australian 15–17-year-olds were spending five and a half hours a
day consuming electronic media, defined as TV, DVDs, internet, or electronic games
(ACMA, 2007). Six years later, another study found that Australians of all age groups
were spending ten hours a day consuming electronic media (McCrindle Research,
2013). US studies have similar results (Rideout et al., 2010). While these studies do not
distinguish between internet use that involves reading text and internet use that
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Journal of Sociology 53(2)
involves watching video, international statistics on the consumption of YouTube demonstrate the increasing consumption of visual material. In recent years both the number
of people watching YouTube each day and the number of hours people spend watching
video each day have been increasing at an increasing rate.2 Currently, one in seven of
the world’s population uses YouTube3 and over 300 hours of content are uploaded
every minute of the day.4
YouTube videos increasingly inform public debate (for example, Mihelj et al., 2011;
Porter and Hellsten, 2014; Way, 2015), and there is the recent phenomenon of videos
going viral. Given this, part of the rationale for Sociomentary was that, instead of writing
an essay that was extremely unlikely to be read by anyone other than the marker, students
would make a film that they could choose to disseminate by, for example, uploading to a
video channel like YouTube or sharing on Facebook.
Engaging publics
The idea of students producing a sociological film that can be disseminated more widely
aligns with Michael Burawoy’s (2004) writing on public sociology. At heart, the idea of
public sociology refers to the need for academic sociologists to have a conversation that
extends beyond the university and engages with the general public, or publics. Until very
recently the written and spoken word have dominated in sociology (Chaplin, 1994;
Shrum and Castle, 2014). Academic journals provide a very controlled forum for conversation within the discipline and are not designed for those outside the discipline to access.
Some sociologists have used the internet to reach out from the academy to the general
public, for example reaching non-academic audiences through popular forums like The
Conversation and Sociological Images. However, even Sociological Images, which successfully reaches 20,000 readers per day, including mainly non-sociologists, relies on
text to communicate (Wade and Sharp, 2012).
Sociologists have recently begun to argue that social researchers need to be thinking
about using film to communicate their research to the public (Shrum and Castle, 2014;
Sooryamoorthy, 2007). Shrum and Castle explicitly make this link between public sociology and film-making, arguing that ‘We do not “do” public sociology; rather, we communicate sociology publicly. The most feasible means of doing this in an effective way
in a reasonably foreseeable future is by training the next generation of sociologists in
video’ (2014: 429). Shrum himself is director of the Ethnografilm documentary film
festival and was involved in making a feature-length film, Brother Time, ostensibly about
clashes before the election in Kenya, but with an agenda of encouraging conversations
among the public about a peaceful outcome (Shrum and Castle, 2014). It is clear that film
can be used to engage not only the general public but also students. Shrum himself
teaches a graduate course of video ethnography and advocates this being included as an
option in all sociology courses.
The sociomentary: the vision of a new genre of visual
sociology
Although sociology has been dominated by the word, the visual has clearly had a presence within the discipline of sociology, particularly through the stream of visual
Waller
433
sociology. The following brief survey of visual sociology is intended to demonstrate that
the sociomentary appears to be a new genre of visual sociology.
Writing in the 1980s, when making film was too expensive for most people, Harper,
who was inaugural editor of the Visual Sociology Review, defined visual sociology, as
‘using photographs to portray, describe, or analyze visual phenomena’ (Harper, 1988: 55).
Within visual sociology is the genre of the visual essay, usually consisting of photographs,
on their own or with supporting text (Becker, 1974; Hyde, 2015; Pauwels, 2012). Also
occupying a prominent place within visual sociology, and overlapping with visual anthropology, is the genre of video ethnography (Pink, 2013; Shrum and Castle, 2014;
Sooryamoorthy, 2007). Sooryamoorthy (2007) suggests that sociologists make films as a
particular form of research paper (ethnography) and the peer-reviewed Journal of Video
Ethnography5 which hosts audio-visual content started in 2014, at about the time I was
designing the unit.
When it comes to teaching sociology, Becker (2000) has long argued for the inclusion
of photography in the undergraduate sociology curriculum while Grady (1991) advocates
that undergraduate sociology students be taught to produce photo essays and documentary
films. The idea of undergraduate students making non-ethnographic and non-documentary films to communicate sociological ideas would, however, appear to be a novel one.
This is partly due to technical feasibility. It is only in the last few years that it has become
possible for anyone with a smartphone to make a short film. It is also due to the focus on
ethnography in sociological film-making. For example, Shrum and Castle’s (2014) vision
of teaching sociology students to make film is specifically that of using film to communicate ethnographic fieldwork. They focus on video ethnography as they consider this to
provide a straightforward narrative that can easily be interpreted by the general public.
However, it is clear that we live in a visual culture, with increasing prominence and immediacy of audio-visual content (Rose, 2014). I would argue that even a casual perusal of
films that are successful at the box office shows that contemporary audiences are becoming increasingly adept at understanding complex audio-visual narratives.
In the original vision for the unit Sociomentary, it was assumed that some students
would choose to make a video ethnography. This, however, proved logistically impossible. University ethics clearance would be required if students were to use film to conduct or report on research that involved human subjects. The timelines for, and work
involved in, obtaining this clearance would be incompatible with a 12-week undergraduate unit. This meant that the films students made would need to communicate a sociological idea without researching human subjects. Possibly, this could be through narrative
fiction or a more experimental approach. When scouring the English-language sociological literature to find a precedent for this, the closest I found was that described by
Guiseppe Losacco, then a PhD student at the Visual Sociology Lab at the University of
Bologna. Losacco sketches in rudimentary form the idea for a sociologically based narration that uses fiction to communicate to lay audiences ‘Weberian ideal types, guided in
their creation by typical sociological consciousness’ (2008: 85). Apart from this very
particular idea of what it might look like to communicate sociological ideas through narrative in film, there seems to be little precedent in the sociological literature for the idea
of communicating a sociological idea through film without researching human subjects.
Producing and analysing visual material can be understood as analytically distinct
activities (Harper, 1988). In practice, however, these may not be discrete categories as
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Journal of Sociology 53(2)
researchers may produce visual material for analysis. According to Rose (2014), the
focus of such visual sociologists tends to be on that which is visible rather than engaging
with the symbolic meanings of the visual. Whereas this may be true when sociologists
produce ethnographic film, it has long been common for sociologists to analyse the symbolic meanings of the visual and the aural in research (Tudor, 1974) and teaching.
In teaching, existing visual and audio-visual material is widely used as a pedagogical
tool to help foster in students an understanding of sociological issues, including the politics of representation. Videos (Andrist et al., 2014),6 feature films (Dowd, 1999; Kennedy
et al., 2011; Valdez and Halley, 1999), TV series (Nefes, 2014; Scanlan and Feinberg,
2000) and photos (Earnest and Fish, 2014; Hyde, 2015) have all been used to illustrate
sociological ideas or as a springboard for discussion. For example, Dowd (1999) uses
feature films to teach students to identify the world view and theoretical perspective
implicit in every film, for example essentialist ideas about gender in the Hollywood film
A Few Good Men. Looking critically at the politics of representation in film is vitally
important (Livingstone, 2004) so that students do not uncritically accept what they see as
the truth and can discern the power dynamics underlying particular representations of
social reality (Nardi, 2006).
Without a critical lens, ‘pedagogical booby traps’ abound when using movies in the
teaching of sociology (Demerath, 1981). One of these is that fictional movies tend to be
underpinned by a psychological rather than sociological world view, for example, portraying redneck prejudice rather than institutional racism or ‘the alienated rebel but not
the social differentiation behind it’ (Demerath, 1981: 73). It is a similar situation with
documentaries. Although the word ‘sociomentary’ is based on, and rhymes with, the
word ‘documentary’, the intention was not that students would produce documentaries.
Critiquing ethnographic films made by anthropologists, Ruby (1975) makes the point
that films that are about anthropology are not necessarily anthropological. Similarly,
films that are about aspects of society are not necessarily sociological. As with feature
films, it is very rare that documentaries are based on a sociological understanding of the
world. For example, documentaries about new technology, no matter how well made and
interesting, invariably take a technologically determinist approach rather than a social
shaping one. Similarly, documentaries about aspects of humans typically take an essentialist approach rather than looking at the social production of gender, race, knowledge
and so on. Underpinning every film, whether documentary or not, is a particular worldview (Dowd, 1999) and the obvious question arises of what makes a film sociological.
The concept of a sociomentary can be understood as an extension of Howard Becker’s
challenge to sociologists regarding photographs. In 1974, Becker asked ‘How can sociological ideas and theory be brought to bear, in a practical way, on photographic explorations of society?’ (Becker, 1974). Becker has pointed out that when sociological concepts
are based on observable phenomenon in the first place, if we really understand these
concepts, we should be able to imagine visual images that will convey those concepts.
However he acknowledges that sociological concepts that are not based on observable
phenomenon, such as status integration, may not have a visual counterpart. Now, Becker
is referring to photographs. Through film, it is possible to communicate sociological
concepts that do not have a visual counterpart as there are the additional communicative
tools of plot and audio. Becker’s example of status integration can easily be communicated through film, and indeed, low status integration forms the plot of many a Hollywood
Waller
435
movie. Clearly, the medium of film affords additional possibilities to photographs for
communicating abstract sociological concepts.
While a sociomentary would appear to be a new genre of visual sociology, it is not
merely a way of engaging students and their publics. It is a new form of meaning production. The next section shows how critical media pedagogy inspires the overall design of
the unit while the curriculum design is based around authentic assessment.
Integrating theory and practice in new forms of knowledge
production: critical media pedagogy
As Sholle (1994: 13) maintains, ‘pedagogy is not simply about curriculum design, teaching techniques and evaluation methods; it is also and fundamentally about how knowledge is constructed in relations of power – how things got to be the way they are and how
they might be transformed’. The design of the unit, Sociomentary, drew from critical
media pedagogy (Sholle, 1994), which is a constructivist approach to learning.
Constructivist approaches to learning emphasize active, independent student-centred
learning, encouraging students to be critical, creative thinkers, and recognizing the importance of emotions in learning (Carlile and Jordan, 2005). In particular, critical media pedagogy has normative goals of justice and equity, and eschews the dichotomy between
theory and practice in media (Sholle, 1994). Students not only learn how to view film
critically, they also learn how to construct their own media messages, in this case through
films. It is closely aligned with a ‘critical practice’ approach towards film (Kydd, 2011)
and is the motivation for the project of critical media literacy (Kellner and Share, 2007).
Through watching films, students learn how audio and visual, the preverbal, are enlisted
in the communication of ideas in film, such as particular ideologies about race (Hall,
1981; Valdez and Halley, 1999). Understanding the politics of representation in film enables students to enlist audio and visuals in the films they themselves make, for their own
purposes of knowledge production. In the case of making a sociomentary, the meaningmaking, or knowledge production, involved communicating a sociological idea or ideas.
The assessment – designed to facilitate authentic learning
The importance of assessment in curriculum design has been well recognized, with Biggs
(1999) making the point that for all but the very motivated students, the assessment will
dictate what work the student will actually do in the unit. Hence the need for assessment
tasks that will demonstrate achievement of the learning objectives and teaching and learning activities that enable completion of the assessment (Biggs, 2003). Table 1 shows how
the assessment tasks mapped to the unit learning objectives.
The major assessment task (worth 45%) was to make a short (2–5 minute) film
communicating a sociological idea. Students had completely free choice as to the
approach and the topic. The only condition was that the use of any stock footage had
to comprise less than half of the film. This condition was negotiated through student
consensus.
The assessment criteria for the film were explained in the rubric provided to students
in the unit outline (Table 2). The main assessment criterion, which was worth half of the
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Journal of Sociology 53(2)
Table 1. Assessment tasks mapped to unit learning objectives.
Unit learning objective
Relevant assessment tasks
That on successful completion of the unit, students
will
Demonstrate knowledge, conceptual
understanding and expertise in sociology
Demonstrate a capacity for critical analysis,
creativity and problem-solving
Integrate and apply sociological knowledge and
theory in the production of a short film
Interpret and communicate sociological ideas,
problems and arguments in modes suitable to a
range of audiences using audio-visual means
Recognize and reflect on social, cultural and
ethical issues in local and international contexts.
Presentation, Peer feedback, Media literacy
assignment, Film, 750-word exegesis of film
Presentation, Peer feedback, Media literacy
assignment, Film, 750-word exegesis of film
Film
Presentation, Film
Media literacy assignment, 750-word
exegesis of film
Table 2. Assessment criteria for film (from unit outline).
Technical quality: You are not judged on the technical quality of the film, but it needs to be
good enough not to distract from the content.
Length: The total length should be between two and five minutes.
Format: The format should be mp4.
Pass
Coherence
20%
The film is a
disconnected
series of
scenes with no
unifying idea or
information
Use of
Satisfactory use
visuals
of the visual
15%
qualities of film to
communicate the
idea
Use of
A genuine attempt
audio
has been made to
15%
complement the
content with the
audio
Sociological Relationship with
content
a sociological idea
50%
can be established
Credit
The film has a
coherent theme
but the style and
mood do not suit
the content
Distinction
The film has a
coherent theme,
but either the
style or mood
does not suit the
content
Good use of the Very good use
visual qualities
of the visual
of film to
qualities of film to
communicate the communicate the
idea
idea
Most of the audio The audio clearly
makes the story
complements the
clearer or gives it content
more impact
High distinction
The film tells a
compelling story
in a style and
mood which are
well suited to the
content
Excellent use
of the visual
qualities of film to
communicate the
idea
The use of audio
is planned and
purposeful, adding
a lot of impact to
the film
Clear relationship Clear relationship Sociological idea
with a
with a sociological creatively and
sociological idea
idea and good
compellingly
insights
presented
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marks, was that the film needed to have a clear relationship with a sociological idea. The
other assessment criteria were coherence of theme (worth 20%), use of visuals (worth
15%) and use of audio (also worth 15%).
Students had free access to university movie cameras, lights, a boom and editing software. Alternatively, they could choose to shoot their film on a smartphone or tablet. The
production standards were irrelevant to their mark as long as the technical quality was
good enough not to distract from the content.
Each week, in order to obtain both feedback and inspiration, students were encouraged to discuss their ideas for their films and their progress with other students. This was
also formalized through the assessment, whereby in the fifth week of semester, students
gave a 5-minute presentation on the idea for their film and gave structured written peer
feedback on another student’s idea. In no more than 300 words, students had to provide
constructive feedback by addressing the following three questions.
•• What makes the student’s idea/issue sociological – or how could it be made to be
sociological?
•• How does the student propose to use film in communicating the idea?
•• Do you have any ideas for how they could make better use of the qualities of film
to communicate the idea?
This peer review component, also worth 10% of the mark, was included to assist students
in learning to evaluate their own work (Carlile and Jordan, 2005).
A media literacy assignment, worth 10% of the total mark, required students to watch
a prescribed film and answer a list of questions related to what the film was trying to
achieve and how it used the qualities of film to accomplish this. Students were also
required to produce a written exposition of the sociological content of their film (750
words). This was to explain what they were trying to communicate through their film and
include a critical reflection on their influences and motivations. This was worth 25% of
the total mark.
Through a review of literature on authentic assessment, Ashford-Rowe et al. (2014)
identified eight elements critical for authentic assessment. Table 3 lists these elements,
mapping them on to the assessments for Sociomentary to show how the combination of
assessments, and in particular, the requirement for students to make a film, meet the
criteria for authentic assessment.
Writing and directing a film is not only a significant challenge that demonstrates a
range of skills, it results in a product that has currency beyond the university. Hence, as
well as catering to students with diverse skill sets, the requirement to make a film provides an authentic assessment of student learning.
Collaboration is an important aspect of critical media pedagogy (Kellner and Share,
2007) and active learning (Suoranta, 2008), and students had the opportunity to collaborate in pairs in the making of their film. Although all chose to make their own individual
film, as described in the next section, the students collaborated in the learning activities,
discussing each other’s ideas and progress and developing the timetable for the film’s
completion.
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Journal of Sociology 53(2)
Table 3. Mapping assessment items against critical elements of authentic assessment.
Critical element of
authentic assessment
Assessment item for Sociomentary
Presentation Peer
Media literacy 2–5-minute film
(10%)
feedback assignment
(45%)
(10%)
(10%)
Extent of challenge
Results in performance,
or product
Demonstration of skill
Demonstration of
metacognition
Authenticity of product
or performance
Fidelity of assessment
environment
Requires discussion and
feedback
Requires that students
collaborate
Written
exposition
(25%)
Extremely
challenging
Students made
an actual film
Opportunity to
collaborate, rather
than requirement
The enactment of sociomentary: teaching and learning
activities
There were ten students enrolled in the unit; three male and seven female. Only three of
them had made a film before. Before the semester began, I was apprehensive about
whether it was realistic to expect undergraduate sociology students to conceive of and
make a film within one semester. Film school typically involves at least three years
learning how to make a film. On the other hand, however, people completely new to
film-making do successfully complete ‘film races’ and challenges, making a film within
24 or 48 hours. Using the approach of constructive alignment, the teaching and learning
activities were designed to enable successful completion of the assessment, including
completion of a film (Biggs, 2003).
The format of the teaching and learning activities was a weekly three-hour workshop that commenced with a mini-lecture lasting approximately 20 minutes, supplemented by weekly readings. The mini-lecture was followed by activities, discussions
of weekly readings, screenings of short films and subsequent discussions. The last half
hour of each workshop was devoted to discussion among students about their progress.
I also used this time to speak individually to each student about their ideas and their
progress. In line with critical media pedagogy, my role as teacher was as a guide,
assisting in viewing the world through a sociological lens (Harper, 1988), rather than
as an expert in anything.
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439
Figure 1. Project timetable devised by students.
Learning how to make a film was a minor focus of the unit. I gave a mini-lecture in
Week 3 on the nuts and bolts of film-making and introduced students to a staff member
from IT services who could assist them with any technical queries regarding the camera
equipment or the editing software.
In order to get students to manage their work so that they had their film ready by the
end of semester, the following week we talked about project planning and troubleshooting. By then, students knew all of the stages involved in making a film and as a group
were able to devise a timetable that would result in a film ready for viewing in Week 12,
the last week of semester. Not having been involved in film-making myself for decades,
I had been nervous about specifying a realistic timetable. Getting the students to devise
the timetable had the benefit of ensuring their commitment to it. The resulting timetable
(Figure 1) was referred to in each subsequent week’s discussion. This became a mechanism to ensure that no student left the making of the film to the last minute.
Each week, students were invited to bring what they were working on to the workshop
for peer comment. For example, in Week 6, some students brought copies of their shooting script to class for peer comment. In Week 7, students talked to each other about their
shot lists.
Other topics covered in the workshops and readings included visual sociology, communicating a sociological idea, creating meaning through audio and visuals, and the politics of representation with regard to gender, sexuality and race. This included examination
of the male gaze in film (Sassatelli, 2011) and hooks’ (1992) idea of the oppositional
gaze in film.
As mentioned, it was originally considered that the students could conduct or report
on research using film. However, the timing of getting through the ethics process did not
allow this for a semester-long unit. Ethics was still a major topic, however, as so much
can be identified in a single shot (Harrison, 2002). Students discussed the ethics of
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Journal of Sociology 53(2)
making a film and, in particular, the ethics of including bystanders. Although, as Harper
(2005: 759) argues, ‘harm to subjects is unlikely to occur from showing normal people
doing normal things’, students were careful to blur people in the background who might
otherwise be recognizable.
Activities were designed to increase students’ critical media literacy skills and hone
their appreciation of the use of filmic devices, including the use of visuals and audio, to
communicate. For example, early in the unit we completed Becker’s seeing exercise
(1974: 6). Each week, we watched a wide selection of short films and analysed them, in
terms of technique and content. I adapted a worksheet of media literacy questions from
a web resource and students filled this in for each film, either during the screening or
straight afterwards. This then formed the basis of discussion in small groups, which
later convened into the whole group. Students were encouraged to suggest any short
films that they would like included in the seminar discussions and speak to why they
had selected them.
We spent a lot of time discussing how to communicate a sociological perspective
through film and discussing whether or not particular films conveyed a sociological
perspective. In terms of making their own films, I suggested to students two possible
approaches. Either they could start with an image or topic in mind and work out what
sociological concepts were relevant, or they might start with a sociological concept and
work out a way of communicating this filmically. It seems that most students did the
latter.
The only prerequisite for the unit was that students had completed at least one sociology unit. While several students were majoring in sociology, at least half had done only
one first-year sociology unit. For one of these students, communicating a sociological
perspective was distilled to illustrating the sociological imagination through linking the
individual experience with the public issue.
Conclusions: outcomes and learnings
Every student rose to the challenge of making a film within the semester and submitted
a completed film by the due date. Several of the films were dramatic narratives using
actors. Others included animations, stills with voiceovers, and one took the form of a
mockumentary. Three students appeared in their own films, all as themselves. The topics
of the films were diverse, ranging across gender, alienation, youth drug culture, waste,
food waste, identity, social structure and langu
