Ghita Dragsdahl Lauritzen, Department of Sociology

Abstract

Innovation and Student Resistance – Designing a New MA Course

This project centers on the development and implementation of a new obligatory innovation course for MA students at Sociology. The course differs fundamentally from other course formats at the department, and this project is concerned with student resistance and anxiety that may arise as a result of new and unfamiliar student roles, teaching formats, and project requirements. The course aims to advance students’ academic skills from critically analyzing complex problems to also designing new potentials and social innovations. Thereby, the course engages with needs for developing sustainable solutions to complex societal problems by proposing a more active role for Sociology in society to advance critical social science perspectives on how to organize innovation.

The course combines sociological theory and social science methods with innovation, entrepreneurship and design thinking frameworks and tools. Didactics center on experiental learning with a high degree of student engagement and collaboration with external partners and organizations to solve acute social problems. Through project-based group work and a combination of lectures, guest presentations, and design thinking workshops, the course trains new student roles requiring students to oscillate between researching complex problems to enabling and drive social change. In addition, students’ innovation projects include constant experimentation in unknown and diverse environments and a high tolerance for failure, which differs from traditional academic project work and can fuel anxiety.

Recognizing resistance towards new learning formats among some students, this project seeks to tackle an apparent paradox between ensuring stability and encouraging change by identifying structures that can guide students through a transformative (and open-ended) process of what Sociology is and can be/do.