SOC101
The Story of Us: Embracing Diversity and Collaboration

Over the next 11 weeks, you’ll learn skills that will help you better understand and appreciate diverse social perspectives so that you can collaborate with others more effectively. In this course, you’ll discover how to put sociology’s methods of problem solving to work to help you step outside of your comfort zone and improve your ability to bridge divides and navigate interpersonal and professional challenges.

This week, you’ll strengthen your problem solving skill by learning how to use a process called the scientific method to make critical decisions in your personal and professional life. You’ll also learn how to avoid the traps that can lead you to faulty decision-making, like bias.

This week, you’ll strengthen your relationship building skill as you explore different cultures and discover the key components necessary to connect and collaborate with others. You’ll also learn how your self and social awareness skill can help you build strong relationships in all aspects of your life.

This week, you’ll strengthen your relationship building and self and social awareness skills by learning about race, ethnicity, and gender. You’ll also learn collaboration strategies that can help you build stronger connections within the cultural groups you identify with, as well as across other cultural groups. By honing these skills, you’ll be able to see other points of view more clearly, which will lead to better collaboration, better communication, and more success—for you and your team!

This week, as you learn about the role of religion in society, you’ll discover how to better understand the religious differences and perspectives in the world around you. You will also explore strategies that will help you collaborate with others so you can build stronger relationships at work and in your personal life.

This week, you’ll strengthen your relationship building, problem solving, and self and social awareness skills by learning how collaborative approaches can be used to make decisions, alleviate conflict, and strengthen relationships across society. Utilizing these skills to encourage teamwork through personal and professional challenges will help you make your individual dreams work, too!

This week, you’ll explore social issues that divide our world, like economic inequality and social stratification. And, you’ll discover how understanding the perspectives of people with different backgrounds can help you solve problems, make decisions, and develop the best solutions for success.

This week, you’ll strengthen your problem solving and self and social awareness skills by exploring the role of power in politics and discovering how power affects decision-making (including your own). Power is a subject that sometimes makes us uncomfortable. But we can put our knowledge of politics and power to work in constructive ways. Whether you’re choosing a candidate to vote for, disciplining your teenager, or negotiating a compromise at work, you’ll be more likely to succeed if you understand the roles and relationships of power, authority, and influence.

This week, you’ll strengthen your problem solving and self and social awareness skills by exploring how—and for whom—the economy functions. And you’ll discover how various aspects of the economy can empower or constrain us as we attempt to access a better life for ourselves and our families. Knowing how economic systems function and how you function in them will help you make decisions that lead to a more successful future!

This week, you’ll strengthen your problem solving skill by exploring how our perspectives can shape our beliefs about what’s right and what’s wrong. Knowing where these beliefs come from can help us better understand when to conform and when to step outside of the norm to make better decisions for ourselves and others!

This week, we’ll take a look back at how far you’ve come and discuss how you can continue using the skills and concepts you’ve learned in this course to step outside of your comfort zone and improve your ability to bridge divides and navigate interpersonal and professional challenges. That’s where our strength as a society lies—not in how alike we are but in recognizing how we can use our differences to forge a brighter future!