Combining Professional Development with Academic Learning in Graduate Seminars

This paper reports on a sociology graduate seminar (“Workplace Studies”) which allows the instructor and students to combine learning with professional development by making the work of the class writing a collectively written “review of the literature” paper. Workplace studies are a genre of sociology that uses eclectic methods to examine the process of doing work, particularly in terms of the relationship of technology to the doing of the work. Instead of teaching a traditional graduate seminar in Workplace Studies, in which students would read and discuss journal articles and book chapters, and then write a library research paper at the end of the course, I decided to make the goal of the course collectively writing a review of the literature paper. We assembled, read and summarized a wide range of articles in workplace studies, debated the strengths, weaknesses, gaps, needs and applications of the field, and came up with a focus for a review of the literature article. The paper has been published by a peer reviewed journal (an annual review). This course benefited the students by teaching them how a literature review is put together from beginning to end, and by resulting in a co-authored publication to help them build their vitas. This innovative approach to the seminar made the tasks one would normally do (such as reading, critiquing, discussing and writing about the area) much more interesting to the students because we were doing real work, not just assignments for a class. In this paper I discuss previous literature on experiential learning, active learning, and professional development, and describe the syllabus for the course, the procedure for producing the paper, and my experiences working with the class to produce the paper and get it ready for publication.