Chevron Left
Back to Social Norms, Social Change I

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Social Norms, Social Change I by University of Pennsylvania

4.6
stars
2,000 ratings

About the Course

This is a course on social norms, the rules that glue societies together. It teaches how to diagnose social norms, and how to distinguish them from other social constructs, like customs or conventions. These distinctions are crucial for effective policy interventions aimed to create new, beneficial norms or eliminate harmful ones. The course teaches how to measure social norms and the expectations that support them, and how to decide whether they cause specific behaviors. The course is a joint Penn-UNICEF project, and it includes many examples of norms that sustain behaviors like child marriage, gender violence and sanitation practices. This is Part 1 of the Social Norms, Social Change series. In these lectures, I introduce all the basic concepts and definitions, such as social expectations and conditional preferences, that help us distinguish between different types of social practices like customs, descriptive norms and social norms. Expectations and preferences can be measured, and these lectures explain how to measure them. Measurement is crucial to understanding the nature of the practice you are facing, as well as whether an intervention was or was not successful, and why. In Part 2, we will put into practice all we have learned in Part 1. New! Please use this link for a 30% discount on the recommended book that accompanies this course! https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780190622053/?cc=us&lang=en&promocode=AAFLYG6...

Top reviews

EG

Feb 21, 2022

This course opened my mind as to understand what moves people to do and/or think the way they do -and how to measure it- in order to be able to correctly intervene for social change. Simply amazing.

PE

Mar 5, 2019

This course will open your eyes to different behavioural patterns that human engage in, teach how about the suppossed mudane but important things in our society and also how to carry out a research.

Filter by:

101 - 125 of 506 Reviews for Social Norms, Social Change I

By Karimzada G V

•

May 16, 2020

First part is completed and I already have learned a lot. My view about social behaviors and related problems have changed as well. The topic is very difficult, but ,thanks to the instructor, it is explained in very easy way with examples and unicef member's experience sharing. Thanks a lot! I keep going to second part :)

By Agnetha C S

•

Apr 17, 2019

Wonderful!

English is not my first language and I have never been in contact with a similar topic before. However, I did not have to study the vocabulary too much as every little detail was explained, and sometimes even twice or oftener. Easy to understand without spending a huge amount on extra studying.

By Sankar V

•

Sep 7, 2016

This course takes you into the root cause of a problem and the very structure of the course is effective in easily being remembered in the minds of the enrollers. Thanks to the Pen University and the UNICEF for enlightening us and improving our perspectives through inter and independent causal learning.

By Nowmi N

•

Jan 10, 2020

It is a wonderful platform to learn a lot about how the social occurrences that we see is our surrounding society which are greatly hampering social growth are forming and how we can approach to know the root causes and properly plan to eradicate them . The course is very nicely designed and executed.

By Kevin A

•

Jun 8, 2019

The course covered the basic components and provided examples to understand the social norms and change, the real life illustrations did make the concepts easier for me to grasp. The discussions at the end of every week also make the course a great platform for learning from other participants.

By Manuel G

•

Jan 2, 2017

It is a Great course for who ever is working with Social organizations and with projects dealing with social Norms, even for another people is always good to understand some patterns of behavior. Am liking a lot what am learning, it is good form my work as Project Manager of an Mozambican NGO.

By Roy H

•

Jan 25, 2019

Perfectly constructed course. It opened my eyes to whole set of new perspectives. I highly recommend this course. The professor is very expressive and detailed in her explanations and her techniques are very well adapted to an online experience and to beginners in this field. Best of luck!

By Karolin G B

•

May 27, 2020

Aprendi muito no curso , sobre conhecimentos e normas que eu não imaginava haver tanta pluralidade. A didática é incrível e a professora está sempre recapitulando os termos para que não haja confusão. No fim , você aprende tudo sem problemas. Estou ansiosa para a segunda parte do curso.

By Mariya K

•

Aug 11, 2017

The course is really great and very interesting! The only point that would make it even better - any feedback from the lecturer for the tasks with questions for discussion. As for me it was really not so easy to find the answers and examples and I am not sure if all of them are correct.

By Nora S

•

Aug 27, 2019

Very interesting, useful and intriguing course and a topic to me! The combination of the main lecturer knowledge and experience with the specific stories of on-the-field practitioners all over the world makes the course more practical and realistic. I wouol definately go for Part II

By Nikolaos L

•

Dec 4, 2019

The course is very interesting and worths every minute. I feel I have learnt a lot about different behavioural patterns we engage in, how to identify norms and how to measure them. It is strongly recommended to those who want to work in NGOs and/or carry out field social research.

By Deleted A

•

May 24, 2020

Very informative course with a focus on structuring rather routine terms which allows you to see it from a different angle. Strongly recommend to those who are involved in any social voluntary organisations as well as those who are interested in phycology or related topics!

By aspiration

•

Apr 28, 2020

It's very important roles that online courses play on this period of time..social studies are meeting what the wold needs to progress..The slides are well prepared and the voice is so clear as well most important thing is that the subject it selve is interesting and valuable

By Maria A M

•

Jan 31, 2019

Really interesting subject, well presented, even better explained, quite complete as a first touch with this topic. I felt like it put an order in my mind on things I already knew or had noticed happening around me and helped me a lot about how to use them consciously.

By Evelyn M

•

Aug 27, 2020

The course was very empowering, rich in many better ways of interpreting social norms .

I struggled with the many new terms, coming form Physics background, it was really tough for me.

In fact I had to take some test more than once.

Nonetheless, the course is very rich.

By Raj K S

•

Jan 31, 2017

This course was very effective in earning orientation and skills on understanding social norms, expectations (empirical and normative) and measuring norms through tools. Its really critical in delivering our activities and programming in more effective and efficient

By Ramesh B V

•

Aug 15, 2020

The course is very useful, and beneficial for me to learn the new concepts and technical terminology. Some of the examples are very useful and productive in learning. Some needs to be elaborated or changed. Continuous use of the same examples idea is excellent.

By Paul C

•

Jun 12, 2020

The above course is very impacting as it addresses most of the issues that we are facing here in Nigeria. The topic that really stood out for me was PLURALISTIC IGNORANCE. I thank UNICEF,COURSERA AND THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA for this wonderful opportunity.

By Linda J

•

Nov 29, 2020

I found it to be a very informative course. The concepts and terminology were challenging at first, but for the most part flowed once the basic terms were clear. I enjoyed the course structure and the use of videos, reading, quizzes, guest examples. Thanks.

By Durba G

•

Mar 20, 2022

Thank you, Dr. Biccheri and Coursera, for this enlightening and thought-provoking course. This is a must-attend course for anyone interested in working on norm change. The framework and tools I gained from this course will be invaluable in my future work.

By Shweta B

•

Dec 5, 2017

It was useful and informative. What it helped me is with providing a different perpective of viewing a social set up, how the issue can be tackled and what could be the alternate way of solving it.

As a professional working in CSR it has been an aid me for.

By Balaji V

•

Jul 7, 2017

An excellent course to pursue. Cleared number of doubts about society and the decisions made by them. learning from this course will definitely benefit me in upcoming time. Many thanks to instructor, the university and coursera for such enriching course.

By Vivek R

•

Aug 26, 2019

It's a wonderful experience of mine as it was my first online course. The way the things have been taught was awesome. Clear Voice, subtle statements with a bunch of examples to elaborate. Subtitles to make it more clear. Regular assessment. Everything!

By Hannah A G

•

Nov 4, 2018

This is a very useful and informative course for me, especially in my line of work in research and public administration. I hope more people could take this course and appreciate the process of understanding and perhaps changing social norms.

By Yazhini M

•

May 31, 2020

The alternating between videos and text kept me interested in the course. In my experience, I have had very little to learn from online courses, but I learned new concepts in this course. I am definitely going to do the second parts as well.