ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the structure of the public sociology course that was first taught in 2012. From there, students describe how they experienced the public sociology learning objectives, assessing what confidence they had in describing the course. Public speaking was integral to all stages of the course as well as in the final group presentation to members of the community, and this loomed as a source of significant anxiety for the students. Writing an ethics application on behalf of the students robbed them of the ability to take responsibility for the formation of their project as an involved process. These responsibilities included meeting with each of the community groups to negotiate and establish the research question and decide on a suitable research output. In subsequent years, ethics applications would be written within the semester and after the students and the community liaisons had decided on a research question and a research output.
