Many instructors use a syllabus quiz to ensure that students learn and understand the content of the syllabus. In this project, I move beyond this exercise's primary function and examine students' syllabus quiz scores to see if they can predict how well students perform in the course overall. Using data from 495 students enrolled in 18 sections of…

This article provides an overview of the Survivors: Local Stories of Domestic Violence (hereafter, Survivors) civic engagement project. Survivors' learning objectives were to increase the understanding of the complexity of intimate partner abuse and foster empathy in outsiders' responses, something at the cornerstone of the #MeToo social movement…

Qualitative methods courses lack tools for teaching students how to capture and analyze the nuanced ways participant subjectivity shows up in interviews. This article responds to the call for greater depth in qualitative methods instruction by offering teachers a series of discussion questions and an in-class worksheet that will help students more…

Although there is a great deal of available material on using nontraditional resources for teaching sociology, the pedagogical uses of science fiction have not been examined for 20 years. This essay first asserts the need for an update based on changes in society and in science fiction over the past two decades. The paper then focuses on the uses…

The current research examines whether a visual syllabus aids in information retention compared to a traditional text-based syllabus. The data derive from two lower-division sociology classes, each having a different syllabus format. Utilizing a syllabus quiz during the first week of the class provides the data about whether syllabus format…

This study adopted a case-study approach to examine how associate degree sociology graduates evaluate their learning in a Hong Kong community college. Through focus group interviews, the learning experiences of sociology graduates were examined, specifically paying attention to their identification of enhancements in learning. The results of this…

Data reproducibility is becoming increasingly important in the social sciences, but it has yet to be incorporated into many undergraduate sociology programs. This note describes a service-learning activity that can be added to an introductory statistics course. Students partner with a nonprofit and analyze quantitative data to answer questions…

This article presents an in-class exercise that teaches students how to call elected officials about a course-related issue of their choice. The goals are to connect classroom learning with real-life action, to show that contacting elected officials need not be difficult or intimidating, and to help students develop a sense of efficacy that can…

This article describes an exercise designed to introduce the topic of Islam and Muslims in a Sociology of Globalization course. The activity asks students to complete a sentence regarding Muslim women. Rather than provide any definitive answers regarding Islam or Muslims, the purpose of the exercise is for students to see the reductive nature of…

This article investigates the effects of teaching about metacognition in a sociological theory course. I created a series of teaching interventions to introduce students to the science of learning, including an interactive lecture on metacognition, a discussion that models metacognitive strategies, and activities for students to practice…

Previous scholarship has demonstrated the value of high-impact practices of community engagement, inquiry-based pedagogy, and collaborative learning for engagement and learning in sociology courses, especially undergraduate research methods and statistics. This article explores the changes made to an upper-division undergraduate course focused on…

In this article, I connect globalization and qualitative methodological practice, describing a semester-long intensive interview project about the anti-apartheid movement. I provide a detailed overview of the project as well as considerations for those who might want to adapt it for their own courses. Using students' reflections on the projects…

This paper presents an analysis of my experiences with a teaching activity that engages students in publishing in Wikipedia on issues relating to globalization. It begins with a short overview of some of the current debates revolving around teaching globalization, which lay ground for the assignment. I discuss how this teaching tool fits with a…

Developing a global mind-set in college students is a goal of many colleges and universities. Most often this goal is met by encouraging students to study abroad. This article explains how a service learning student engagement program at home achieves this goal by pairing Introduction to Sociology students with young immigrant children in a weekly…

Even though pedagogy courses in sociology are on the rise, many departments do not offer or require a course on teaching sociology or a teaching proseminar series. However, faculty in such departments do have other options for incorporating and integrating pedagogical issues into their standard curriculum. In this note, I offer one suggestion for…