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TRAILS: Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology

TRAILS Featured Resources

TRAILS, the Teaching Resources and Innovation Library for Sociology, provides a way for you to easily locate peer-reviewed teaching materials, showcase your teaching ideas, develop professionally, and join a community of scholarly teachers. You will find great assignments, syllabi, lectures, and other teaching ideas at TRAILS. Please also consider submitting your great ideas for teaching. The Featured Resources include some of the newest additions to our collection.

-Stephanie Medley-Rath
TRAILS Lead Editor

Featured Resources

An outline of a family showing different sex parents, a child, and a stroller
Jamie Oslawski-Lopez, Jaclyn A. Tabor
Is it “All Right” to Refuse to Have Children With One’s Spouse?
December 9, 2025
Subject Area(s):
Family, Sex and Gender
Resource Type(s):
Class Activity, Lecture, PowerPoint
Class Level(s):
College 200, College 300, College 400
Class Size(s):
Any
Abstract:

This lecture and class activity explores Americans’ attitudes about fertility decision-making among different-sex, married couples. Instructors use the PowerPoint slides to engage students in survey research, review findings from Oslawski-Lopez and Tabor’s (2024)...

Cover Page Requires Subscription PDF Requires Subscription PPTX
A student coding field notes
Michel Estefan
Practicing Ethnography with Visual Media: A Step-by-Step Assignment Using Downtown Abbey
December 9, 2025
Subject Area(s):
Cultural Sociology, Ethnography, Political Sociology, Qualitative Methodology, Research Methods, Teaching and Learning in Sociology
Resource Type(s):
Assignment
Class Level(s):
College 100, College 200, College 300, College 400, High School
Class Size(s):
Any
Abstract:

This applied exercise introduces students to the practice of ethnographic analysis through close observation of visual media. Using Downton Abbey as a case study, students learn to produce rich, reflexive field notes, code their observations into central...

Cover Page Requires Subscription PDF
Someone working on a laptop using ChatGPT
Tamanna Shah
Seeing with Machines: A Reflexive Ethnography of AI Systems in Everyday Life
July 23, 2025
Subject Area(s):
Ethnography, Science and Technology
Resource Type(s):
Assignment
Class Level(s):
Any Level, Graduate
Class Size(s):
Medium
Abstract:

Students conduct a reflexive ethnography of their everyday AI interactions, keeping field notes and analyzing how AI shapes perception, behavior, and identity. Instead of being passive users, it challenges students to reveal the invisible processes shaping their...

Cover Page Requires Subscription PDF Requires Subscription PDF
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