Today’s reflection is on the role of the group when learning in higher education (an all other learning experiences as well). I therefore want to share an activity that I did with our first term sociology students this spring for the second time. The activity has a two-folded aim where the first is about getting to know each other and the other is to get them to start reflecting on social inequality and how much contexts matter for our opportunities in life. What I do is that after I have introduced MDU and the course I give them time to fill out a menti, one question at the time. See results below:
I gently click trough the question and give them time to answer then and then we quickly go through the result. After that I talk a bit about what sociology is and give them some basic concepts and after a while I let them interview each other on why they stated university today. This activity not only activate them but it also helps them understand the group that are in and the different path that led them to where they are today. They often in the interviews talk about feeling of fitting in or not at the university which I then can use to talk about class and social mobility for example.
