TS Home Page

Mail for Editor

Editorial Board

Editor's Comments

Table of Contents

Subscriptions

Order Back Issues

Manuscript Submissions

Discussion Group

Content Guidelines

Notice to Contributors

Abstracts

ASA Home Page

A Quarterly Publication of
The American Sociological Association

ABSTRACTS--Volume 27, Number 2, April 1999

ARTICLES

NOTES

CONVERSATION

Multiple Perspectives on Multimedia in the Large Lecture
(Timothy D. Pippert and Helen A. Moore)

Students, graduate instructors, and a professor responded in journals, on objective tests, in focus groups, and on survey questionnaires to the effects of computer multimedia in four large lecture classes. Graduate instructors and students responded in focus groups to multimedia technologies with consistent themes, including enhancement of cognitive strategies (note taking and organization of ideas) and motivation. However, students also expressed distancing from the instructor. Surveys of the same student groups and a journal kept by the course professor reflected similar themes. Student achievement outcomes (pre- and posttest scores) showed no differences across two classroom applications of multimedia presentations: static and dynamic. Sociology instructors should consider adopting more complex computer multimedia in light of balancing interests: (1) resource scarcity in education and (2) few direct demonstrable effects of media on objective measures of student test outcomes in this and other research. However, our participants consistently cite considerable enhancement of students' cognitive skills and motivations (especially note taking and student interest levels), and our instructors endorse the positive effects of multimedia development on the process of reworking and rethinking their course curricula and materials.

Return to top of page.

Versifying Your Reading List: Using Poetry to Teach Inequality
(Timothy Patrick Moran)

Employing literature as a pedagogical tool in the sociology classroom is a well-known and accepted practice in many courses and curricula. Yet nearly every discussion of this "sociology through literature" approach either explicitly refers to or implies the use of fiction novel. In this paper, the sociology through literature approach is extended to include poetry as pedagogically useful classroom material. Poetry provides many of the gains attributed to using literature in general, while also conveying some unique advantages over other literary forms. I discuss the benefits of using poetry to teach and apply sociological concepts, and provide specific examples of how I employ this technique to teach social inequality.

Return to top of page.

Music and Cultural Analysis in the Classroom:
Introducing Sociology Through Heavy Metal
(Jarl A. Ahlkvist)

This article demonstrates that popular music's potential as a tool for teaching interactive introductory sociology courses is enhanced when a cultural analysis of a specific music genre is incorporated into the classroom. Using this type of analysis as an integrative course theme promotes active learning as students apply sociological ideas to explain empirical reality. Using heavy metal music as an example, I present a two-part model for integrating a cultural analysis of this music and its subculture into the introductory course. Students first conduct a sociologically grounded cultural analysis of heavy metal music. Then they expand this analysis during the rest of the course by applying new concepts, theories, and research to explain this cultural object sociologically. The article's final section discusses the application of this model in a range of class contexts and provides student responses to its use in an introductory sociology course.

Return to top of page.

The Dating Game: An Exercise Illustrating the Concepts of Homogamy, Heterogamy, Hyperogamy, and Hypogamy
(Eileen O'Brien and Lara Foley)

This note describes an active-learning exercise illustrating what our couplings might look like if social forces were not at work in the mate selection process. The "dating game" provides a nice introduction to a discussion of concepts such as homogamy and heterogamy. Student volunteers are randomly paired together at the front of the room without regard to race/ethnicity, gender, age, height, and so on. This results in many more interracial, same-sex, and interfaith pairings than typically seen in the general population. The entire class is then challenged to consider the social repercussions of these pairs--the reactions of parents, friends,strangers, or legal policies. In closing, student evaluations and responses to the exercise are considered.

Return to top of page.

Teaching About Race and Ethnicity:
Trying to Uncover White Privileg for a White Audience
(Dan J. Pence and Jimi Fields)


This article presents a pedagogical tool for teaching predominantly white students about institutional racism and its accompanying white privileges. Students from a research project replicated racism in daily customer-employee interactions and then presented their results to freshmen-dominated, mostly white introduction to sociology classes. Student discoveries of racism in the local community personalized discrimination and reduced white students' resistance to seeing their own racial privileges.

Return to top of page.

Learning About Sampling and Measurement
by Doing Content Analysis of Personal Advertisements

(Beth Rushing and Idee Winfield)

This paper describes a pedagogical exercise for research methods that is both pedagogically rigorous and interesting to students. Specifically, we explain a series of assignments that involves students' use of personal advertisements to apply their knowledge of sampling, measurement, coding, and analyzing data. Students' responses to this approach indicates that (1) this set of assignments helps them better-understand sampling and measurement, (2) the experience with real data allows them to empirically test their commonsense assumptions about what characteristics people seek in dating partners, and (3) students' fears about methods and statistics diminish.

Return to top of page.

Rethinking the Graduate Seminar
(Sara Steen, Chris Bader, and Charis Kubrin)

In this paper, we argue that instructors have not paid adequate attention to the manner in which they teach graduate seminars. To illustrate the need for a dialogue about effective graduate courses, we lay out several models and discuss strengths and weaknesses of each. Through a discussion of the role of authority in the graduate classroom, we argue that a carefully organized, professor-led discussion is the most effective means of teaching graduate students. Finally, we provide a detailed example of an effective graduate seminar by using Bloom's taxonomy and addressing the concerns laid out in the paper.

Return to top of page.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE TOP 1000!

[InterNIC Guide to the Internet - Selected Site]

The Editor of Teaching Sociology is Helen A. Moore.

For articles, notes, and conversations, send manuscripts to: Helen A. Moore, Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324. Phone: 402-472-6081, Fax: 402-472-6070.

For book, video, and software reviews, send manuscripts to: Laurie Scheuble, Department of Sociology, Doane College, 1014 Boswell Drive, Crete, NE 68333. Phone: 402-826-8220, Fax: 402-826-8278.

For questions about manuscript processing, contact Bennie Shobe, Department of Sociology, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0324. Phone: 402-472-6038.

The Webmaster is Pauline H. Pavlakos. Observations on form and egregious spelling may be directed to Ms. Pavlakos.

The Teaching Sociology Web Page is located at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Le Moyne College, the Jesuit College of Central New York.

Page last updated: April 2, 2001