SOC101, Understanding the Social World, is a first-year subject that is offered at CSU face-to-face and online, in all teaching sessions, and has approximately 700 students per year. This compulsory first year subject services a range of degree programs, therefore, most of the teaching in the subject is ‘service teaching’ whereby sociology content is taught to non-sociology students. Apart from a few exceptions there is little scholarship about the service teaching of sociology in Australia, yet a considerable percentage of sociology teaching occurs within other disciplines. SOC101 was redeveloped in 2021. The redevelopment aimed to increase engagement through relevance. Achieving relevance to different degree programs and a range of future professions was a challenge we met through a focus on critical thinking and transformative learning pedagogies. Specifically, we embraced the ‘sociological imagination’ (Mills, 1959) as a critical thinking tool. We also aimed to increase engagement using media to make the subject relevant and topical. We employed greater flexibility in assessment and implemented the concept of ‘learning communities’ through team teaching and peer learning. The overall aim was to create a vibrant learning community where critical thinking could potentially lead to transformative learning. This study evaluated the redevelopment through the interrogation of qualitative comments from Student Experience Surveys (SES) two years prior to and two years after the redevelopment. Analysis of SES focused on determining evidence of critical thinking, transformative learning, student engagement, and student understandings about the relevance of the subject to their degrees and future professions. Qualitative data was taken from two sections in SES where students are encouraged to provide comments to the questions: “What about this subject did you find most helpful in your learning?” (Positive comments) and “What about this subject did you find least helpful in your learning?” (Negative comments). These comments were read iteratively with the aim of developing coding frames. We applied thematic analysis by reading and re-reading student comments iteratively, resulting in five themes emerging from the process. Whilst overall findings comply with other studies in indicating that engagement levels increase when students perceive learning content as relevant, topical, and contemporary, it is interesting to note that this study also found that critical pedagogies and radical democratic approaches enhanced critical thinking when combined with flexibility and self-direction in assessment choice. The development of a learning community, fostered by team teaching and peer learning, was found to cultivate an environment that significantly enhanced engagement. Whilst our finding that pedagogies focused on the development of critical thinking facilitates the deepening and expansion of transformative learning is positive, we conclude that many students may not be able to experience transformative learning due to poor attendance levels (no mandatory attendance), reduced interaction hours, reduced assessment and online learning that many students do not partake in. These constraints reflect the neoliberal corporatization of the university. The effect of which diminishes student engagement, creates ambiguity, and reduces investment in learning.
