1. Objects From Everyday Life: A Can of Coca-Cola

“Objects From Everyday Life: A Can of Coca-Cola” is a detailed adaptation of an activity adapted by Peter Kaufman (1997) and published in Teaching Sociology. This exercise is designed to help students develop their sociological imagination.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Peter Kaufman (1997) updated by Stephanie Medley-Rath

Date Published: 9/2/2015

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. What is the difference between a Private Trouble and a Public Issue? Exploring the Sociological Imagination

By adapting the in-class exercise described by Adams (2010), the following activity helps students explore C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination by generating examples of private troubles and public issues. By the conclusion of the activity, students should be able to explain the difference between troubles and issues, provide their own examples of each, and brainstorm their own public solutions to contemporary social problems.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): David S. Adams (2010) updated by Jessica A. Cohen

Date Published: 1/12/2015

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Small

Language: English

 

3. Learning to Interpret Cultural Meaning through an Etic Description of Familiar Culture

Undergraduate students often have trouble interpreting cultures other than that with which they are familiar in a way that takes into account the symbols and meanings that explain behaviors, objects, and ideologies. Instead, many fall into the trap of making ethnocentric assumptions and coming to conclusions that are informed by their own cultural perspectives. This in-class active learning exercise makes the familiar strange, using Horace Miner’s well-known 1956 essay “Body Ritual Among the Nacirema” to introduce students to an etic, cultural outsider-like description of American culture. This activity demonstrates that when students overlook or misunderstand cultural meaning, they can come to myriad inaccurate depictions and conclusions about social life and behavior. It therefore reinforces the importance of developing an emic understanding of cultures rather than accepting social phenomena at face value.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Elizabeth Miller

Date Published: 6/24/2016

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Education and the Conflict Perspective: A College Admissions Committee Activity

This in-class activity is designed to illustrate the conflict perspective and to further a student’s understanding of how the education system perpetuates economic, gender, and social class inequalities. In this activity, students take on the role of a college admissions committee member and assess potential candidates for admission in small groups. As small groups decide on whom they will admit, the instructor gives updates that change the admission process’ dynamics. As the updates come in, students will be challenged to address the real-life constraints and wrestle with which candidate to admit. This activity engages the entire classroom and requires students to interact directly with their classmates in their discussion of education system and the conflict perspective.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Todd W. Ferguson

Date Published: 2/23/2015

Subject Area: Education

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Making Marx Accessible: Understanding Alienated Labor through Experiential Learning

The authors introduce an exercise designed to make Marx’s theory of alienated labor accessible to students in a Sociology of Work class. Through a role-playing activity where students create and sell goods under conditions of both alienated and nonalienated labor, students actually experience the different material and social consequences of these conditions. The article briefly describes the exercise and shows how it can be used with Marx’s original writings. We assess the effectiveness of the exercise, using students’ answers to open-ended questions about the activity, and discuss possible limitations.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Kylie Parrotta, Alison Buck

Date Published: 10/1/2013

Subject Area: Marxist Sociology

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

 

3. The Four Sources of Evidence

This in-class activity is designed to introduce beginner-level students to the four major sources of evidence (ethnography; surveys; experiments; and archival documents/texts) used in most sociological research. After students have read the assigned textbook chapter on methods and heard a lecture about the same subject I distribute the four activity sheets (“Methods Activity A/B/C/D”). Students are then asked five questions that ask them to apply the information about research methods learned via the textbook and lecture. When students are done performing their individual activities, for additional practice, instructors may also lead students in a discussion using the “sources of evidence chart” by having them fill in each of the cells.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Daniel T. Buffington

Date Published: 10/18/2012

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Using Everyday Life to Illustrate Durkheim’s Organic Solidarity

Martin Luther King Jr., a famous sociology major, once remarked, “Before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you’ve depended on more than half of the world.” Drawing inspiration from this quote, students are asked to describe what they did in a given day to illustrate the individualism, diversity, and interdependence that is associated with Durkheim’s concept of Organic Solidarity. Learning outcomes include a stronger grasp of the political context in which Durkheim was writing, as an increased ability to apply organic solidarity, an abstract theoretical concept, to student lives.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Chris Hardnack

Date Published: 8/26/2014

Subject Area: Theory

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Human/Non-Human Animal Boundary Maintenance Through Language

This 30-minute exercise is designed to help students recognize how socially constructed conceptual boundaries between humans and non-human animals are created and maintained through language. As the English language is laden with phrases and expressions that link humans and non-human animals through similes and metaphors (e.g., “strong as an ox” and “raining cats and dogs”), these phrases and expressions demonstrate human/non-human animal differences by blurring the boundaries through rhetorical comparison. To determine and understand what these boundaries are and what they mean, this activity requires students to identify examples of figures of speech that compare humans and non-human animals in some way, after which it requires students to critically analyze these expressions through a deconstruction process.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Kelly L. Markowski

Date Published: 4/24/2016

Subject Area: Animals and Society

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Small

Language: English

 

3. The “What’s in a Name?” Exercise

This exercise seeks to have students learn about the significance of names in American society. Students with American sounding names are favored by teachers and peers and their names are rarely mispronounced, made fun of, or given nicknames. Students from minority or immigrant groups have names that are often made fun of, mispronounced, and given nicknames. This “Americanization” of a name is part of the assimilation process. There are personal costs, such as shame, to this renaming, for the individual and their family. The failure to correctly pronounce these “foreign sounding names” contributes to the ongoing hegemony of American names. The exercise is designed to have students in the class who tend to be members of dominant groups learn about the privileges they have received from having a familiar name and to learn about the costs experienced by students who have accepted the nicknames they have been assigned. Students who have gone along with accepting their nicknames rather than their family given name can discover how their adoption of this name has affected their self-image and diminishing of their culture.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Jerome Rabow, Keisha E. Payne, Zachary Philyaw

Date Published: 4/6/2016

Subject Area: Social Psychology

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Agents of Socialization Visual Sociology Group Project

 For this assignment students will deepen their understanding of sociological theory imploring visual sociology. Students will take 10 photographs of bumper stickers or tattoos. When a person sees a bumper sticker or a tattoo they associate the message or image with the car owner or person. When a person gets a tattoo or bumper sticker they consciously realize this association will occur. Therefore, bumper stickers and tattoos may depict things that are meaningful enough to an individual that they do not mind being associated with these images or ideas wherever they go. To this end, bumper stickers and tattoos can be predictors regarding the agents of socialization exerted and the subsequent influence. Students will work in groups to both collect and analyze photographs and present findings and observations.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Temple Day Smith

Date Published: 6/25/2016

Subject Area: Visual Sociology

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Understanding Your Upbringing: How Parenting Behaviors are Socially Formed?

Many students who take a lower level Marriage and Family course are interested in understanding their own family lives. This writing assignment helps develop the students’ initial curiosity into a deeper sociological understanding of their own parent-child relationships. Specifically, this assignment is designed to help students (1) understand different methods of socialization to examine their own experiences of parent-child interactions; (2) gain sociological understanding of their own upbringing, as well as their actual or would-be parenting behaviors; and finally (3) foster their sociological imagination to see the link between the macroforces of society and the microeffects of individual parenting behaviors.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): May Takeuchi

Date Published: 3/15/2013

Subject Area: Family

Class Level: College 200

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Presentation-of-Self Exercise

In this in-class exercise students are sensitized to the presentation of self in a modified speed-dating setting and gain experience in qualitative research by engaging in participant observation. Students meet in pairs and talk with one another in back-to-back 3-minute interactions. Immediately following the meetings, they confidentially record “field notes” as they reflect on the social psychological processes of impression formation and impression management. The exercise, which also works well as an icebreaker early in the semester, is an entertaining and useful way to introduce principles of symbolic interaction and presentation of self in an interactive context.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Jeff A. Larson, William Tsitsos, Kalfani Ture’

Date Published: 7/25/2011

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

1. Hubble and #Hashtags: Teaching Tips and Assignments for Major Theoretical Perspectives

Students often have difficulty with major theoretical perspectives, specifically (1) what their purpose is and (2) keeping them straight in their minds. First, I use the Hubble Space Telescope as a parallel to these perspectives. Images of galaxies and planets viewed telescopes with different filters and lenses look drastically different in different wavelengths. Similarly, social phenomena appear different when viewed through different theoretical perspectives. Second, I use “Twitter translations” to aid students in mentally organizing and recalling these perspectives. By invoking something so prevalent in their lives and using short but memorable summaries, they find them easy to relate to and remember. I have developed an assignment that uses both of these teaching techniques to assess students’ ability to apply and think critically about major theoretical perspectives.

Resource Type(s): Assignment, Image, Lecture

Authors(s): Will LeSuer

Date Published: 9/9/2015

Subject Area: Theory

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. The Anomie Conspiracy

The concept of anomie plays a large role in the understanding of social behavior and thus, emerges as a recurring theme in the study of society. However, students in introductory sociology courses often do not have clear understandings of anomie and the way that it can affect social behavior. Exposing students to anomie, however, makes them aware of how it feels, how people react to it, and why they react as they do. As this article explains, an exercise in which students create anomie within the classroom enforces the idea that the tendency to deviate increases as the level of anomie increases. Students who took part in this exercise understood the relationship between anomie and deviance significantly better than students who did not take part in the exercise did.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Debra Wetcher-Hendricks

Date Published: 9/18/2014

Subject Area: Deviant Behavior/Social Disorganization

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. McJobs and Pieces of Flare: Linking McDonaldization to Alienating Work

This article offers strategies for teaching about rationality, bureaucracy, and social change using George Ritzer’s The McDonaldization of Society and its ideas about efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control. Student learning is facilitated using a series of strategies: making the familiar strange; explaining McDonaldization, self-investigation, and discovery; and exploring and implementing alternatives. Through assignments, class exercises, and films, students contextualize modernity and its unintended negative consequences by viewing McDonaldization though the lenses of work and jobs. These strategies provide a framework to help students understand key concepts, critique McDonaldization, and formulate positive ways to cope with Weber’s iron cage.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Linda Ann Treiber

Date Published: 10/1/2013

Subject Area: Organizations, Formal and Complex

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Exploring Stigma with Undergraduates

This lecture/in-class activity and take-home writing assignment provide an engaging and informative way to help introduce students to the sensitive topic of stigma. Key theorists, such as Erving Goffman, and theories, such as Labeling and Modified Labeling Theory, are discussed as well as consequences of stigmatization and ways in which stigma can be managed. The lecture/activity includes a ready-to-use PowerPoint for in-class lecture. Also included in the PowerPoint is further reading for both instructors and students, sample test questions, a take-home essay prompt and grading rubric, and a class activity applying Goffman and the information discussed in the lecture to a variety of media and pop culture icons/images.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Elena M. Fox

Date Published: 7/11/2016

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Deployment Patterns

The purpose of this exercise is to examine the social construction of deviance. No activity is inherently deviant. This exercise encourages students to examine social situations when actions that normally may be labeled as deviant are not. This activity looks at deviance from a different perspective. Rather than looking at why certain actions are deviant, this activity looks at “deviant” activities and examines why the individuals performing these activities do not acquire the deviant label. Through this exercise, students should come to a better understanding of how deviance is relative to time and place.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Jason Anthony Greenway

Date Published: 4/3/2015

Subject Area: Criminology/Deviance

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

 

3. Celebrities, Crime, and Deviance: Understanding Formal and Informal Sanctions

In this activity, students will learn how to distinguish informal deviance from crime (formal deviance), as well as distinguish informal social sanctions from formal social sanctions. Students will also be called on to identify the connection between social sanctions and social norms. Celebrity biographies are used to apply the concepts of deviance, crime, informal social sanctions, and formal social sanctions. Students discuss the concepts in small groups and then engage in a larger class discussion.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Jennifer Stevens

Date Published: 10/9/2014

Subject Area: Deviant Behavior/Social Disorganization

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Identifying Privilege and White Fragility

 The purpose of this activity is to give students a better understanding of racial privilege by having them identify “White Fragility”—when the least amount of racial stress provokes emotional and behavioral defensive moves, such as anger or evasion. This activity assesses students’ comprehension of White Fragility and students’ ability to understand the impacts of privilege on understanding race relations. In Part I, students review group privilege and White Fragility through an instructor guided class discussion. In Part II, students form groups to complete a handout. Students use the handout to match 10 triggers of racial stress to potential responses to such triggers. Finally, Part III has students write a critical reflection paper about the activity.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Brennan Miller

Date Published: 7/7/2016

Subject Area: Race and Ethnic Relations

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

 

2. Everybody Eats: Using Hunger Banquets to Teach about Issues of Global Hunger and Inequality

Experiential and active learning exercises can benefit students in sociology courses, particularly, courses in which issues of inequality are central. In this paper, we describe using hunger banquets—an active learning exercise where participants are randomly stratified into three global classes and receive food based on their class position—to enhance students’ knowledge of global hunger and inequality. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of students’ learning and engagement in three hunger banquets found that students had increases in perceived knowledge of the amount, severity, and causes of global hunger.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Deborah Harris

Date Published: 7/1/2015

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Analyzing Contemporary Social Issues in a Global Context

Using the Google Public Data World Development Indicators (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_) that have been constructed by the World Bank, students will examine the commonalities and disparities with respect to contemporary social issues in a global context. They will compare poor nations with medium income nations with affluent nations. Students will also consider specifically how social well-being and development indicators in the United States compare to other nations and the trajectories of change over time.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Bhavani Arabandi, Stephen Sweet, Alicia Swords

Date Published: 10/9/2014

Subject Area: Political Economy

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Linguistic Ideologies, Fallacies of Racism, and the Construction of the Racial “Gaffe”

The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to sociological and linguistic concepts useful for analyzing media narratives often encountered during the “moral panics” that follow infamous racist utterances. To do this, the activity utilizes video of an infamous racist chant that went viral in early 2015, along with several articles and statements that were published online in the ensuing discussion. This activity will assess students’ understanding of linguistic ideologies that underlie common English usage in the United States, as well as the five fallacies underlying the folk-ideology of racism. In this activity students address the implications of new concepts for personal experiences with racial “light talk,” and the circulation of racist language through media discourse surrounding gaffes.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): David Lee Rigby

Date Published: 4/21/2015

Subject Area: Racial and Ethnic Relations

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

 

2. Critiquing Color-Blind Racism and Racial Fallacies in “The Daily Show”

This classroom activity provides an opportunity for students to practice identifying colorblind racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2003) and racial fallacies (Desmond & Emirbayer, 2009) in media and in everyday conversations. While students often understand the idea of covert racism, their ability to make use of the concepts in their lives is often limited because they are less able to identify covert racism as it arises in everyday life. Students read one or both articles as homework, then raise hands in class to identify and critique these forms of covert racism as they appear in a conversation between Bill O'Reilly and John Stewart on the Daily Show. I conduct this activity early in the term, and refer back to it as a reminder of how to critically appraise discourse about race.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Tal H. Peretz

Date Published: 12/29/2014

Subject Area: Racial and Ethnic Relations

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Understanding Colorism and Gender Inequality Through Media

The objective of this assignment is to have students exercise critical thinking skills in the ways they think about racial and ethnic inequalities. Racism is well documented, but we rarely examine and talk about skin color discrimination within minority groups. This assignment introduces students to the concept of colorism, its effects on racial stereotypes and images in the media, as well as standards of beauty, specifically for women of color. Colorism research fosters a deeper understanding of systemic racism around the world. This assignment asks student to analyze colorism and the social inequalities associated with the media’s portrayal of women of color.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Virginia Little

Date Published: 7/30/2015

Subject Area: Race, Class, and Gender

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Pricing Beauty

Using Ashley Mears’ Pricing Beauty as a basis, students are introduced to stratification, the social construction of beauty, and content analysis. Moreover, the class discussion prompted by the activity helps set the tone for future class discussions.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Stephanie Medley-Rath

Date Published: 4/15/2013

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Small

Language: English

 

2. Perspectives on Gender Inequality in the Labor Force: Gloria Steinem and Sheryl Sandberg

Scholars argue that we have reached a period of “stalled” gender equality at work: The wage gap between men and women persists, and men and women continue to be concentrated in different types of occupations with differential rewards. In this exercise, students watch two videos presenting different explanations for and solutions to gender inequality in the U.S. labor market. One perspective is presented by Sheryl Sandberg, the Chief Operating Officer for Facebook. The second perspective is presented in a PBS interview with Gloria Steinem, a noted feminist, activist, and journalist. After watching the videos, students discuss the similarities and differences in the perspectives and approaches from the videos, and will apply different theories for gender inequality, based on readings and class lecture, to the videos.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity, Video

Authors(s): Holly Straut Eppsteiner

Date Published: 4/6/2016

Subject Area: Work and Labor Markets

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. The Relationship between Feminism and Social Norms

This class activity is meant to help clarify feminism and feminist theory by relating them to social norms. Feminism is the belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes. It also involves recognizing and critiquing male supremacy combined with efforts to change it (Beasley, 1999). When change comes to a community slowly, then the people in the particular community have a chance to choose what changes to accept and which ones are not desirable. However, when change comes abruptly, then people in a community have to adjust to the situation to be able to survive. War is a phenomenon that can bring about sudden change in a community. The Somali society is a mostly traditional society where patriarchy prevails. This system of patriarchy concentrated power in the hands of men and gave little chance for women to participate outside the home, including education and employment.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Nasra Abubakar

Date Published: 12/6/2015

Subject Area: Social Change

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Families in the News

The objective of this assignment is to give students the opportunity to apply their sociological imagination to a “real world” social problem facing families. Students will engage in individual investigation, finding a reputable information source, and critically analyze the news media. This activity is intended for the later part of the semester after students have built a foundation of knowledge of the sociology of families. The relevance of sociological ideas, theory, and research extends to the everyday happenings in our personal/social lives and the world around us. In this assignment, students will find one current event/news story that relates to families that appears in a reputable news source. Discuss the basic issues/ideas, and discuss how sociology helps you understand the content.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Virginia Little

Date Published: 5/12/2016

Subject Area: Family

Class Level: College 200

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. “In 10–15 years . . .”: Imagining Our Future Families

This learning activity insists that students use their imaginations to think about what their families will look like in 10 to 15 years through actively, anonymously, and critically engaging with each other. Through anonymously filling out a handout about their future families and sharing with their peers, this activity will introduce or familiarize students to sociology of family concepts such as family of origin, household division of labor, traditional marriage, neotraditional/nontraditional marriage, breadwinning, caretaking, ideology, and heteronormativity, among many other possibilities. This activity can span anywhere between 30 and 60 minutes and a review of essential concepts will be needed.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Brandi Lee Perri

Date Published: 8/18/2015

Subject Area: Family

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Marriage Contract

The goal of this exercise is to raise student’s awareness of the gendered division of household labor, and how the responsibilities of the second shift are managed in domestic relationships. In addition, students are required to consider their own ideal scenario for managing how the division of labor will be (or should be) organized in their future (or current) relationships.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Marcia Hernandez

Date Published: 4/26/2010

Subject Area: Sex and Gender

Class Level: College 200

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

4. Stepping into Inequality: An Activity to Prepare Students for Understanding an Unequal Education System

Motivated by experiential learning strategies and critical self-reflection, this activity aims to introduce students to educational inequality and the effects of race, class, and gender within the education system. Doing the “Educational Steps” activity enables students to not only critically reflect on their own educational experiences but to also understand the diversity of experiences in the classroom. The unique value of this activity is that students are encouraged to expand their knowledge of the educational system based on their own past experiences as well as those of their classmates: The social difference between themselves and others are communicated by the physical difference between students. We present data that suggest that this activity increased the students’ knowledge of education inequality.

Resource Type(s): Class activity

Authors(s): JoEllen Pederson, Patrick McGrady, and Hanna Jokinen-Gordon

Date Published: 8/14/2012

Subject Area: Education

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

5. Differential Outcomes and Socialization

Merton (1968) identifies manifest functions as the intended and expected functions of an institution while latent functions are unrecognized and therefore unintended outcomes of social processes. For example, while we all agree one manifest function of higher education is obtaining a degree, a latent function can be the interactions of young people that can lead to marriage. Though nothing is explicitly wrong with this latent function of higher education, it brings to question “how things are done” in our social world (Berger & Luckmann, 1967). This group work project is designed to encourage discussion of other processes at all levels of our education system that serve manifest and latent functions and critically discuss the potential outcomes of unrecognized processes. Through group work and class discussion, students will gain a better understanding of how the production and reproduction of social institutions can result in different outcomes for individuals from different standpoints.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Jerome M. Hendricks

Date Published: 8/8/2014

Subject Area: Stratification/Mobility

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Using County-Level Health Data to Examine the Social Determinants of Health

This assignment prompts students to apply understandings of the social determinants of health to analysis of publically available socioeconomic and health data, with the ultimate goal of encouraging students to critically engage in and personally relate to course material. Students are asked to use data from the County Health Rankings and Roadmaps program (www.countyheathrankings.org), a collaboration of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, to analyze the county-level social and economic contributors to health within a county of their choosing. This assignment (1) tests understanding of social conditions as fundamental causes of disease, (2) evaluates student ability to interpret population data, and (3) garners interest in the material by providing the opportunity to study a county of personal relevance to the student.

Resource Type(s): Assessment, Assignment

Authors(s): Kristen M. Schorpp

Date Published: 6/27/2016

Subject Area: Medical Sociology

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Teaching Healthcare Students How to Think Sociologically

This in-class activity and assignment builds on Adam’s (2010) exercise on the differences between sociological and nonsociological explanations for human behavior but with a focus on healthcare students. Healthcare students are already familiar with the general concept of medication adherence; however, they have most likely not been encouraged to consider the behavior from a sociological perspective. This activity asks students to generate sociological and nonsociological explanations for medication-taking behaviors and to consider the implications of these explanations for their future interactions with patients.

Resource Type(s): Assignment, Class Activity

Authors(s): Danielle M. Giffort, updated from David S. Adams (2010)

Date Published: 2/5/2016

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Identifying Sociological and Psychological Perspectives on Mental Illness

Students often enter sociology courses with preconceived ideas about mental health and illness. Because of these preconceived notions, understanding the differences between sociological and psychological approaches to mental health can be difficult for students to grasp. The object of this in-class assignment is to engage students with specific examples sociological and psychological theories of mental illness found in a documentary. This activity will assess students’ understanding of psychological and sociological perspectives such as the biological/medical approach, stress theory, and labeling theory. In order to do this, the activity will consist of a think-pair-share technique of learning. Students will work independently for a portion of the activity and work in small groups for the final portion of the activity. Students will view a Frontline documentary titled “Medicating Children,” which focuses on several families coping with the diagnosis and medication of their children with attention deficit disorder.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Struthur L. Van Horn

Date Published: 4/17/2015

Subject Area: Mental Health

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Globalization and World Systems Theory: An Introduction

Understanding the social world from a global perspective is becoming increasingly important for sociologists. World Systems Theory is a useful framework for explaining some of the macro-level dynamics occurring around the globe. The PowerPoint and lecture notes presentation is designed to be a concise and easy to understand introduction to some of the major concepts in World Systems analysis. It is primarily designed to be used for introductory sociology classes. This resource has a dual focus on the economic aspects of globalization and World Systems Theory, as well as the ecological effects of global economic processes. With both aspects in mind, the resource is designed to introduce one of the approaches sociologists use to frame global economic developments, relationships between countries, and the relationship between society and nature.

Resource Type(s): PowerPoint

Authors(s): Anthony Jack Knowles

Date Published: 12/21/2015

Subject Area: Environment Sociology

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Public Sociology for Political Sociology: A Politics and Society Op-Ed Assignment

This assignment requires political sociology students to compose an op-ed piece modeled after those in the most widely respected U.S. and international newspapers. After selecting a particular issue related to politics and public policy, each student compiles sociological research on their topic to make a compelling and publicly accessible argument about the issue, complete with policy recommendations. The assignment requires the sociological expertise of a research paper but demands that students present this expertise to an educated lay audience in an insightful, engaging, thought-provoking, and brief op-ed piece.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Hana Erin Brown

Date Published: 6/28/2012

Subject Area: Political Sociology

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Political Knowledge of College Students: A Simple Group Test

Students often come to class with little-to-no awareness of the specifics of the world of politics operating around them. This exercise asks students, without warning, to name the major bills that have been passed in their state’s General Assembly. From past experiences conducting the exercise, students are only able to name a few out of the hundreds of new bills. The lack of political knowledge displayed by students can be connected to numerous sociological theories, concepts, and research findings, especially in the fields of political sociology and public policy.

Resource Type(s): Class Activity

Authors(s): Timothy Madigan

Date Published: 4/29/2011

Subject Area: Public Policy

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. Public and Private Urban Space

This exercise with corresponding PowerPoint combines the application of concepts adopted from the now classic Jane Jacobs’ Death and Life of the Great American Cities with introductory urban sociological lessons. The key concepts for this session include: neighborhood, urban residential patterns, urban ecology, urbanization, private, semiprivate, and public space. By diagramming the private, semiprivate, and public spaces in residential blocks depicted in street-view photographs, students become familiar with how the built environment conveys meaning. Students also identify cities by category and history, thereby framing the residential block in contexts. The “Private and Public Space” activity explores the connection between the physical and the social in cities. Students are asked to photograph a residential block and diagram the public, private, and semiprivate demarcation of space.

Resource Type(s): PowerPoint, Assignment, Class Activity

Authors(s): Paul Walker Clarke and Carla Rose Corroto

Date Published: 5/22/2012

Subject Area: Urban Sociology

Class Level: College 300

Class Size: Medium

Language: English

 

2. County Demographic Profile

But what does this have to do with me?! Many students probably ask themselves this question when encountering demography. Because we are all population actors, demography impacts all of us! This assignment provides an opportunity to apply demographic concepts and principles to their own lives by using county-level data to examine their home counties. As Poston and Sullivan note (1986), giving students the opportunity to gain population literacy allows them to see the relevance of demography in their everyday lives. This semester-long project allows students to find out about various aspects of the demography of their home county, including the following topics: fertility, mortality, migration, population change, age and sex composition, racial and ethnic composition, and projecting the demographic future.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Kathrin A. Parks

Date Published: 10/25/2012

Subject Area: Demography

Class Level: College 300

Class Size: Small

Language: English

 

3. Exploring Home Ownership, Residential Segregation, and the Growing Racial Wealth Gap

On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered the infamous “I Have a Dream Speech” in which he reflected upon the state of black America one hundred years after slavery: “. . . the life of the Negro is still badly crippled by the manacles of segregation . . . the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity.” Now more than 50 years since MLK’s declarations, the racial wealth gap between white and black households continues to grow and good portion of this disparity is attributable to historical as well as current patterns of home ownership and residential segregation. This assignment explores these critical issues in more depth. First, students engage in Seiter’s discussion-based classroom activities (2003), critically reflecting on the attainment of family wealth. Next, students watch Episode 3 (“The House We Live In”) of the documentary, Race: The Power of an Illusion (Adelman, 2003), and later read the research and policy brief “The Roots of the Widening Racial Wealth Gap: Explaining the Black-White Economic Divide” (Shapiro, Meshede, & Osoro, 2013).

Resource Type(s): Assignment, PowerPoint

Authors(s): Jeneve Ruth Brooks

Date Published: 7/22/2014

Subject Area: Stratification/Mobility

Class Level: Any

Class Size: Any

Language: English

1. The Other Me: An Assignment to Develop the Sociological Imagination by Imagining a Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes

This assignment asks introductory sociology students to create a new biography and imagine how this change in their personal profiles affects their interests, predilections, goals, and opportunities. Comparison between the personas and projected outcomes of their other me with their true selves illuminates the way social forces shape their lives and develops student understanding of the sociological imagination. This assignment is most effective as a culminating experience to more fully examine sociological concepts learned during the semester.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Fletcher Winston

Date Published: 8/18/2015

Subject Area: Introduction to Sociology/Social Problems

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

2. Teaching the Sociology of Climate Change

Pedagogical Essay Resource: The goal of this article is to provide guidance to those introductory sociology and social problems instructors who want to introduce the subject of the sociology of climate change into one week of an existing quarter or semester class. We do so with the understanding that this is where sociologists can have the greatest impact on the majority of students we teach. We also deal with issues raised when instructors provide students with deep insight about an “intractable” problem but do not give them the tools or encouragement necessary to help them craft their own futures. Finally, while it is critical for those teaching about climate change to have a grasp of the science of climate change, the authors argue that sociology can have its greatest and most meaningful impact by teaching the sociology of climate change.

Resource Type(s): Essay

Authors(s): Scott G. McNall and Andrew Szasz

Date Published: 5/13/2014

Subject Area: Environmental Sociology

Class Level: College 100

Class Size: Any

Language: English

 

3. Teaching Sustainability Through Activism: The Greening University Projects

This class project asks students to work in small groups to “green” some aspect of their university or college, applying theory and course concepts to the process of making environmental change in the world around them. The project entails writing a proposal, working to implement that proposal, and reporting to other class members the process and outcome.

Resource Type(s): Assignment

Authors(s): Shawn A. Trivette

Date Published: 6/8/2015

Subject Area: Environmental Sociology

Class Level: College 300

Class Size: Medium

Language: English