Civic engagement is contributing and working to make a difference in the public (or civic) life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and commitment to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community and solving public problems, through both political and non-political processes. Civic engagement is undergirded by constructs of collective action and social responsibility (Ehrlich, 2000).
Civic engagement not only benefits our communities, but has positive benefits for individual well-being, reducing isolation and creating connections with people and institutions beyond ourselves. Helping students draw connections between policy or legislation and course content, disciplinary questions or field-related priorities is critical for educating students about the role we all play in shaping the communities we live in, not only while at University of Michigan but also in the future. While it can be challenging to know where, or even if, to begin making these connections more explicit in your courses, we can support your efforts.
- Request a consultation if you would like us to work with you to prepare your students for civic and community engagement
- Browse our full set of civic and democratic engagement resources for faculty & staff or go directly to simple strategies to encourage students to vote.
Encouraging students to engage in the democratic process is a non-partisan activity.
Strategies to promote discussion, reflection and connections:
Examine disciplinary connections to broader society
Whether your course content is directly related to civic engagement or not, sharing how your discipline affects, interacts with, and shapes broader social systems significantly impacts students’ ability to understand and participate in civic life. Politics is about how we make collective agreements about allocating resources, therefore politics is inherent in all disciplines and fields. The same critical skills that help your students critically evaluate the platforms of candidates and elected leaders can help them de-code the politics of your discipline. We offer the following questions to help your students better understand and make sense of this connection.
- How is academic knowledge produced in your field or discipline? Who is included in this knowledge production and who is left out?
- What examples can you share of how broader economic, political, health, educational and social systems impact your discipline or field?
- What forms of data and analysis are considered legitimate in your field and why?
- How has your field changed over time? What examples can you offer of current debates or competing schools of thought?
- How is your discipline or field affected by local, state or federal legislative policies or judicial decisions?
- How has your discipline or field informed local, state or federal legislative policies or judicial decisions?
- How might my discipline be impacted by policy decisions as a result of the election?
- How can you help students identify ways to contribute to these processes?
These questions offer a starting point to make visible the decision-making mechanisms of your field. Perhaps more importantly, they allow students to consider ways they can contribute to or influence these mechanisms.
Connect your course content to policy issues & elections
Across disciplines, every course is somehow implicated in election issues. From STEM courses to the performing arts, policy issues shape the topics we teach and influence how our respective fields approach knowledge production, research priorities, and more. By reflecting on the connections between the election and your course, you can better help students engage with the data and skills they need to weigh the issues raised by the election.
- How are the topics covered in my course impacted by the policy and/or funding issues raised by this election?
- Which topics within my course might require special attention in light of the election?
- How might the candidate platforms be a resource for teaching and learning these topics?
- What are the diverse perspectives and voices that characterize my field related to these topics, and how do I maintain some balance in presenting them?
- What kinds of knowledge/research from my field shapes the issues raised by this election?
Project Pericles' Nonpartisan Voter Education Modules offers concrete strategies and tools.
Incorporate civic learning activities into your courses
- The Pathways to Civic Engagement & Community Change offer students multiple (and overlapping) ways to contribute to a more just and inclusive democratic society. Our companion Guide for Academic Partners offers strategies and resources that support each of the pathways:
- Policy & Governance
- Community Organizing & Activism
- Direct Service
- Community-Engaged Learning & Research
- Philanthropy
- Social Entrepreneurship
- Browse this collection of civic learning activities curated by Ginsberg Center. Some allow students to practice democratic processes in order to develop democratic habits, while others support students engaging with socially relevant topics.
- Unsure how much time you have to spend? Explore more ideas organized by how much time you have to spend with students on civic and democratic engagement
Encourage and support discussion and dialogue
Being able to support all students to engage fully in discussions can be challenging, but it is a critical responsibility of a civically-engaged campus. We offer this step-by-step planning guide from Ginsberg Center & CRLT as one template for planning election-related discussions in the classroom.
- Additional Resources:
- Facilitating Political Discussions Guide (Institute for Democracy & Higher Education)
- Navigating HOT Moments in the Classroom (Columbia University)
- Applying Dialogic Techniques (IGR)
- Deliberative Dialogue Discussions Guides (Project Pericles)
Collaborate with others to support civic engagement
You can work with colleagues and others to engage more deeply in civic issues:
- Hold a meeting with other faculty to strategize ways to support students' learning around civic engagement
- Host a panel with faculty or other experts to talk about specific issues
- Bring in a local representative who is legislating about policies relevant to your field or discipline
- Check-in with your professional or disciplinary associations to get ideas for connecting your discipline with public policy
- Take advantage of U-M's institutional membership to Campus Compact by attending free civic and democratic engagement-focused programs, national conferences, and by exploring their massive resource library
Further readings
- I Will Register and Vote, If You Teach Me How
- Battistoni, R. M. (2017). Civic engagement acrosss the curriculum: A resource book for service-learning faculty in all disciplines (e-book). Boston, MA: Campus Compact.
- Ehrlich, T., & Ehrlich, T. (2000). Civic responsibility and higher education. Oryx Press.
Civic engagement resources by topic:
Syllabus language and announcement slides
- Make a Canvas announcement to encourage voting. Choose a sample announcements from Ginsberg Center's pre-designed slide deck of voting announcements for classrooms, based on UMICH Votes' system of messaging.
- Share govote.umich.edu link in your syllabus - it covers voter registration assistance and FAQs, regardless of where students hail from
- Share vote411.org or BallotReady links in your syllabus - they give a nonpartisan overview of all upcoming elections and what's on the ballot all across the country, customized by address
- Include a voting-specific syllabus statement, such as:
- "The University of Michigan encourages eligible students to exercise their right to vote, and students of all citizenship backgrounds to actively engage in issues of public concern. When more people participate, a broader array of perspectives is represented in policies and laws that impact our country, society, and the world. Information about voter registration, polling locations and additional resources are available at govote.umich.edu."
- Make a social media post using UMICH Votes' System of Voting Messaging to share information with students about campus polling locations, voter registration information and key election dates.
Course planning and facilitation strategies
Course planning
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Connecting Your Course to the 2024 Elections: Your Motivations - Worksheet. A reflection activity to help instructors identify their motivations for addressing the election and election-related issues in their courses, with a focus on civic and democratic learning impacts. From the workshop Connecting Your Course to the 2024 Election, 9/26/24.
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Identifying & Strengthening Course Connections to the Election - Worksheet. A reflection activity designed to help instructors explore potential connections between their course and the election, or issues at stake in the election. For instructors who already have ideas for these connections, this activity also offers reflections questions to strengthen connections to student learning objectives. From the workshop Connecting Your Course to the 2024 Election, 9/26/24.
- Practicing Democracy: A Toolkit for Educating Civic Professionals (2023) - Practicing Democracy is a practical guide, with 12 easy-to-use lesson plans, along with an assessment rubric. Published by AAC&U and Campus Compact, this guide offers civic prompts that can be used as stand-alone conversation starters or a sustained curriculum over a semester.
- Civic Engagement Resource Database - large database of syllabi, assignments, and activities crowd-sourced by faculty across the country. Searchable by keyword, academic disciplines, class size, institution size. Produced by Project Pericles, a consortium of colleges and universities that promotes civic engagement within higher education. Also available: curriculum, slide decks, and activities on Voter Suppression, Why Voting Matters, Deliberative Dialogue and more
- Explore Campus Compact's massive resource library on civic and democratic engagement, student civic learning and leadership, community-engaged research and teaching, and much more
- Explore how to support students on all six Pathways to Civic Engagement and Social Change
Facilitation & Discussion
- Structuring Classroom Discussions About Elections - Planning guide for discussing elections in the classroom from CRLT & Ginsberg Center
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Identifying Goals Worksheet for High Stakes Discussions - Election Edition worksheet. Worksheet to help instructors identify and articulate explicit goals for each election-related discussion, in relation to course learning, disciplinary and civic/democratic engagement learning objectives. From the workshop Framing & Facilitating High Stakes Discussions: Election Edition, 9/24/24 & 10/21/24.
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Strategies for Responding to Hot Moments - Election Edition handout. Language and facilitation strategies that instructors can use to respond to sudden or intense expressions of emotion in the classroom. From the workshop Making the Most of Hot Moments: Election Edition, 9/20/24 & 11/8/24.
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Open-Ended Discussion Questions - Election Edition handout. Open-ended discussion questions to use when facilitating discussions about elections and election-related issues. From the workshop Framing & Facilitating High Stakes Discussions: Election Edition, 9/24/24 & 10/21/24.
- Facilitating Political Discussions Guide (Institute for Democracy & Higher Education)
- Applying Dialogic Techniques (IGR)
- Deliberative Dialogue Discussions Guides (Project Pericle
Classroom activities
- Show students how to use their address to search vote411.org or BallotReady - they give a nonpartisan overview of all upcoming elections and what's on the ballot all across the country, customized by address
- Have students complete their own voting plan, using these Victors Voting Plan templates: one-sided, double-sided, fillable pdf
- Civic Learning Activities - a collection of classroom activities from Ginsberg Center, focused on a variety of civic learning topics including decision-making, knowledge production, media literacy, and citizenship
- Dialogue Deck: A Conversation for Political Reflection - a sample activity from the 2020 election by Ginsberg Center and UMMA that uses art to spark reflection about democracy
- Bring students to the "Hey, We Need to Talk!" exhibit in the Eleanor Noyes Crumpacker Gallery at UMMA, which has works of art paired with interactive questions around civic responsibility and national identity that visitors can discuss.
- Discuss the connections between your field and civic and democratic engagement
- How is academic knowledge produced in your field or discipline? Who is included in this knowledge production and who is left out?
- What examples can you share of how broader economic, political, health, educational and social systems impact your discipline or field?
- What forms of data and analysis are considered legitimate in your field and why?
- How has your field changed over time? What examples can you offer of current debates or competing schools of thought?
- How is your discipline or field affected by local, state or federal legislative policies or judicial decisions?
- How has your discipline or field informed local, state or federal legislative policies or judicial decisions?
- How might my discipline be impacted by policy decisions as a result of the election?
- How can you help students identify ways to contribute to these processes?
- Discuss how your course content connects to policy issues and elections
- How are the topics covered in my course impacted by the policy and/or funding issues raised by this election?
- Which topics within my course might require special attention in light of the election?
- How might the candidate platforms be a resource for teaching and learning these topics?
- What are the diverse perspectives and voices that characterize my field related to these topics, and how do I maintain some balance in presenting them?
- What kinds of knowledge/research from my field shapes the issues raised by this election
Workshops and events for teaching during an election year
- September 14: Deliberative Pedagogy author talk (11:45a-1:30p, Ginsberg Center, 1024 Hill St.)
- September 15: Ariel Aberg Riger event (Ginsberg Center, 1024 Hill St.)
- October 7: Workshop (10a-noon)
Funding
Funding opportunities, most external to Ginsberg, either for civic engagement or for teaching with another context
