Fostering students’ creative thinking is a frequent goal of higher education instructors. When instructors aim to develop this skill in their students’ sociological writing, it encourages instructors to create alternatives to the commonly used research paper. This...

This class activity uses legislation recently considered by the United States Congress to develop students’ ability to conduct gender analyses of social phenomena. Used in a large, online undergraduate course providing an introduction to the sociology of sex and...

In this course, we will use various Japanese pop culture genres, including comics, anime, food, and music, and examine the interplay between local and global culturescapes. Students are expected to critically inquire into the reality and complexity of people's...

Teaching sociology often involves difficult, painful conversations about injustice and collective trauma. These conversations can be emotionally demanding, which may influence a student's capacity to learn and to remain in sociological studies. Perpetual ideas...

Although students rely upon social solidarity in their everyday lives, they generally fail to acknowledge its existence. An active learning class exercise introduces sociology students to Emile Durhkeim’s concept of solidarity and distinction between its...

While the public is captivated and horrified by mass shootings, there is disagreement among academics and criminal justice practitioners about how best to define mass shootings. This course begins by examining definitional issues and why these issues matter to our...

Instructors, the ASA, and other sociological leaders agree that social structure is an essential concept to a sociology curriculum (e.g. ASA 2004; Persell, Pfeiffer, and Syed 2007; Grauerholz and Gibson 2006; Wagenaar 1991) . After examining the pedagogical...

This is a brief lesson on how to run basic statistical tests using data originally gathered from the Marvel Comics Wikia page. Students are introduced to three important tools in statistics: a descriptive table, a contingency table, and a regression. It is...

This content analysis activity allows students to examine the role that mass media and consumer culture play in children’s gender socialization. More specifically, students analyze the gendered meanings within marketing materials for children’s Halloween costumes....