2024
Lauren Danielowski, Asmita Aasaavari, and Dunahay Pereyra (University of Connecticut)
Turning Theories into Action: A Proposal for a Feminist Graduate-Student Led Teacher Training
A significant portion of the teaching load is often shouldered by PhD students within sociology departments. Unfortunately, there can be an absence of structured department-level graduate instructor/teacher training programs informed by feminist pedagogies. To remedy this deficit, Danielowski, Aasaarvari, and Pereyra are proposing a training module that focuses on intersectionality, multiculutural learning, and positionality. It is based on a pedagogical approach that embraces multiple techniques for engaging student attention and understanding diverse learning styles and lived histories. So often, graduate instructors have access to what they should teach but are severely lacking substantive training and systemized resources on how to teach. This team is working to design a feminist teacher training for graduate instructors and TAs, grounded in the principles of reflexivity, that will provide a pedagogical approach to suit the needs of multiple institutions and course types, connecting theory with practice.
Brian Gran and Reema Sen (Case Western Resrve University)
Game for Change
Gran and Sen are working to produce deeper student learning of inequalities with regard to gender in the workplace. This project works to adopt gamification as an innovative teaching approach to bring “real life” scenarios into sociology classrooms. Gamification is now a highly popular phenomenon among Gen Z students and research is starting to show its efficacy in higher education. The goal is to develop a complete module on gender inequality with a technology-enabled game at its core and incorporate it into both graduate and undergraduate sociology classrooms to further this body of research. This project will engage with social justice teaching and learning scholarship with a focus on diversity and gender and inclusiveness.
2023
Marley A. Olson (Walla Walla Community College)
Integrating Course-Based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) in Sociology at Two-Year Institutions
Dr. Olson is committed to invigorating research culture and developing effective course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) at two-year institutions. CUREs provide more inclusive and high-impact learning opportunities for all students rather than a select few, as ordinary UREs are limited to serving. The goal is to design, implement, and assess a CURE that provides students at two-year institutions an effective way to engage in original analysis of publicly available quantitative data. As a result, this project addresses the gap in social science resources and explores potential strategies for implementing research experiences in the social sciences generally at two-year institutions.
Chris Bettinger, Katie Manbachi, Fatmir Haskaj, Valerie Francisco-Menchavez, Angela Fillingim (San Francisco State University)
Module Development for Global Sociology Courses
Dr. Bettinger and his team endeavor to fill the gap in resources for sociology course instruction with a global focus. Five teaching modules will be developed, prioritizing theoretical concepts such as orientalism, transnationalism, necropolitics, postcoloniality, and collective violence. These modules will be designed for easy adoption and adaptation by instructors in courses such as global sociology, global ethnic and race relations, and international migration. With more robust materials oriented towards a postcolonial critique of historic and contemporary global institutions, instructors can better illustrate the complexities of globalization for students.
2022
Melissa C. Brown (Santa Clara University) Whitney N. Laster Pirtle (University of California, Merced) Zakiya T. Luna (Washington University in St. Louis)
Dr. Melissa Brown will lead a team creating a digital public sociology project with the hopes of including new voices in how we define critical race theory in academia. In her proposal, Brown illustrates that academia has a pipeline problem, making it challenging for marginalized people who do not see themselves represented in the curriculum to navigate academic standards. Brown proposes to expound upon the principles already laid out on https://blackfeministsociology.com by creating the Black Feminist Sociology and Digital Pedagogy Initiative (BFSDPI), an archival media tool with blogs, recorded films, online broadcasts, and social media. The goal of BFSDPI is to highlight underrepresented academics’ contributions to Black feminist sociology through a multimedia virtual encyclopedia.
Janet S. Armitage (St. Mary’s University San Antonio) Sue P. Nash (St. Mary’s University San Antonio)
The Sociological Imagination Journaling Project
Dr. Janet Armitage and Dr. Sue P. Nash will lead “The Sociological Imagination Journaling” with the goal of building students’ self-awareness and mindfulness. This project uses Mills’s “The Sociological Imagination” to draw connections between students’ understanding of social structures and institutions, by looking into their own personal lives and building a contextualized understanding and application. Armitage and Nash introduce two specific sections—mindfulness meditation and scaffolded reflective writing assignments. Meditation helps students map their values and see the social basis of their identities. Reflective writing is a short weekly reflection with the aim of developing informed personal knowledge as a vehicle for understanding social forces.
2021
Kylie Parrotta (California Polytechnic State University), Andrea Hunt (University of North Alabama), Bedelia Richards (University of Richmond), Marni Brown (Georgia Gwinnett College), Lisette Garcia (Pennsylvania State University), Brianna Turgeon (Jacksonville State University), Baker Rogers (Georgia Southern University), Robert Brown (North Carolina Central University), and David Brunsma (Virginia Tech)
Striving Towards Anti-Racist Teaching in the South (STARTS)
Dr. Kylie Parrotta, based at California Polytechnic State University, will lead a team of researchers in collaboration with the Southern Sociological Society (SSS) and the Sociologists for Women in Society South (SWS-South) to address a gap in diversity and inclusion training in many graduate programs. In their proposal, Parrotta et al. illustrate that this lack of training results in sociologists “reproduc[ing] inequality in their classrooms unintentionally when discussing gender, race, class, sexuality, and other dimensions of diversity” in courses on inequality and social problems. The Howery grant will provide funding for the team to create the STARTS (Striving Towards Anti-Racist Teaching in the South) Inclusivity Institute pilot program, which will consist of a series of five workshops for 20 graduate students and junior scholars who are teaching, or who plan to teach, courses such as Intro to Sociology, Social Problems, and Race & Ethnic Relations. The goal of the workshop series is to “prepare participants to grapple with positionality, intersectionality and interlocking dimensions of oppression, anti-racist and intersectional activism, and the academic and applied job market.” They hope STARTS will grow into a larger training program to advance inclusive pedagogical training for future educators in sociology.
Marie-Claude Jipguep-Akhtar, Delores Jones-Brown, Bahiyyah Muhammad (Howard University); Denise Bissler, Nazneen Khan, Delores Jones-Brown (Randolph-Macon College)
HBCU-PWI Collaborative Learning as Racial Justice Pedagogy
Dr. Nazneen Khan of Randolph-Macon College will lead a joint, multi-method project between criminology and sociology faculty in her department and Howard University’s Department of Criminology and Sociology, with the goal of deconstructing barriers to teaching race and racism. Support from the Howery grant will be used to accomplish one of the project’s three stated goals—collaborative teaching and learning—by merging classrooms at Howard University, an HBCU, and Randolph-Macon College, a PWI, and by collecting data through student surveys and faculty reflections and observations. These diverse classrooms will provide the opportunity for students from a variety of cultural, ethnic, and social class backgrounds to enhance their “cultural capital” by working together. Instructors from both institutions will lead students to “dismantle the walls of whiteness” that impede intercultural understanding. The goal is for students to walk away with greater empathy and a deeper knowledge of the “historical and social construction of race, racism, and race relations” that uphold a white supremacist structure.
2020
Pamela Koch, Debra Swanson, and Aaron Franzen, Hope College
All Students (should be able to) Write and Research
Sociology is a research discipline that teaches students how to critique, analyze, and write effectively about the world around them. A high impact way to impart these skills is to get students involved in research and writing early in the their undergraduate education (Barnett 2005). Educators believe critical thinking is key to a college education, and that integrating thinking and writing is important across the undergraduate curriculum. Koch, Swanson, and Franzen’s project incorporates and builds upon this understanding, placing sociology among the keystone courses for liberal arts education (Massengill 2011). Building undergraduate research into the core curriculum of Hope College’s sociology program is one way to reunite teaching and resaerch as a single pursuit, and the proposed programmatic shift would incrementally inform teaching undergraduate sociology.
Matthew Archibald and Omar Nagi, College of Mount Saint Vincent
Advancing Quantitative Reasoning among First-Generation and Racial/Ethnic Minority Sociology Students
The College of Mount Saint Vincent (CMSV) is a minority-serving institution that ranks as one of the ten most diverse schools in the nation, with a high proportion of first-generation college students. This proposal is a joint effort of the Sociology Department and Fishlinger Center to improve below-average quantitative skills and reasoning for students in Sociology and Public Policy. To meet this goal, Archibald and Nagi propose Advancing Quantitative Reasoning (AQR), conducted through the Social Science Research Methods and Public Policy Applied Statistics courses of the 2020-2021 academic year. Based in the pedagogical literature, they have designed a five-module tutorial program which augments the course material, and they plan to implement an experiemental design to determine the efficacy of the tutorial. Students in the experiemental group will be remunerated to provide peer leadership and tutoring to the control groups during the course. Short-term goals are enhanced student mastery of quantitative skills through the tutoial, as well as improvement in departmental student-learning benchmarks. A successful project will serve as the cornerstone for expanding the mission and goals of the Fishlinder Center.
2019
Yasemin Besen-Cassino, Montclair State University
Qualitative Research Methods by Example
Besen-Cassino is designing a research-based curriculum for students in the graduate level course, “Interviews and Focus Groups” by providing a first-hand research experience for students which is essential for their future studies and job market outcomes. The main activity for the project is running three different focus groups. Having multiple focus groups will not only ensure there is diversity among participants, but also provide ample opportunities for students to participate in different roles. The students will be coming with a qualitative research question. They will invite a qualitative researcher who has done focus groups in the past to share their experiences with the class and share strategies for writing questions and techniques for asking the questions. The students will conduct an expert interview with this scholar on their experiences in designing and running focus groups. Based on the expert advice and scholarship read in class, students will recruit participants, write the questions, and run the actual focus groups. Students will act as moderators, co-moderators and note takers–recording body language and non-verbal cues. After the completion of the data collection, there will be critical discussion sessions on the problems and methodological issues as well as ways to improve. By the end of the course, the students will be able to design focus groups, write in-depth interview questions, run focus groups, code and analyze the results.
Stephanie Teixeira-Poit, Jeanette Wade, and Tobin Walton, North Carolina A&T State University
Preparing Students for the Workforce through Research Methods and Data Analysis Skills
Research suggests that there is a digital divide between black and white college students in the United States. Previous studies have found that black students enter college with less familiarity with computers and fewer computer literacy skills than white students. This digital divide is readily apparent at North Carolina A&T State University (NC A&T), which is a historically black university with a high percentage of black, low-income, and first-generation college students. Many A&T students do not have access to a computer at home; instead, they rely on their cell phone or university resources to complete their academic work. In the program’s research methods and social statistics courses, a primary learning outcome is for students to learn computer-based data analyses skills that will make them marketable to future employers. Achieving this learning outcome without student access to computers is quite challenging. In this project, the researchers will purchase laptop computers for use by students in the research methods and social statistics courses taught by all professors in the Sociology Program at NC A&T. They will implement an experiential learning approach using these laptops in the Fall Semester of 2019 and the Spring Semester of 2020. They will provide students with a primer on computer literacy skills and then use the laptops to teach students data analysis skills using statistical analysis software. They will collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative data to examine whether the computer literacy intervention and hands-on activities with laptops improved student learning outcomes. Their primary research question is: Can experiential learning approaches using computers help black, low-income, and first-generation college students overcome barriers to learning and improve learning of research methods and data analysis skills?
2018
Peter Hart-Brinson, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Eau Claire Longitudinal Student Survey: Institutionalizing High-Impact Experiential Learning in Sociological Research Methods
The Eau Claire Longitudinal Student Survey (ECLSS) is a high-impact student-faculty collaborative research project implemented as part of the university’s Sociological Research Methods (SOC 332) course. Students in SOC 332 conduct a semester-long group research project in which they design a questionnaire module about a topic of their choice, analyze the collected data, and prepare presentations and research reports about what they learned about the student body. The ECLSS also includes questionnaire modules designed by faculty, and the resulting data create opportunities for further student-faculty collaborative research.Although electronic surveys can be done for free, the ECLSS is designed to teach students best practices in survey research; therefore, TEF funding will be used for the printing and mailing of survey invitation letters and for participant incentives. Conducting a smaller, targeted survey of a random sample of a defined population (instead of a free, online mass survey or an in-person survey using convenience samples) allows students to learn about critical issues in survey research methods: the non-linear relationship between sample size and accuracy of estimates; response rates and the impact of different types of bias; and the difference between descriptive statistics (and their error estimates) and inferential statistics.
Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl and Matthew Wranovix, University of New Haven
Games and Student-Centered Learning in Higher Education
Educators have increasingly raised concerns that traditional teaching techniques are inadequate for modern students, arguing that entrenched methods decrease student engagement, performance, and similar outcomes. Among sociologists, this has been particularly relevant to teaching abstract subjects that students have difficulty relating to in a concrete manner. Critics propose that students require active learning approaches. While a number of innovative techniques have been developed, research on these interventions and the theories upon which they are based has not kept pace with the changes occurring. This project will test this body of theory using an analysis of games-based pedagogy as a case-study. The researchers will teach students about colonialism and the colonial imagination—sociological concepts that students cannot generally experience in a concrete way. Quantitative and qualitative comparisons will be made across students in control groups (using traditional lecture and discussion) and students in test groups (using a board game). Four important questions will be answered: 1) whether games make subjects less abstract, 2) whether and to what degree students find games engaging; 3) whether engagement created by games is simply “fun” or increases interest in the subject matter; and 4) whether this “productive engagement” leads to increased understanding and/or retention of information.
Mark Fossett, Texas A&M University
Reviving the SimSeg Lite Web-Based Segregation Simulation
This project will revive a previously functioning, but now disabled, web-based program to enhance undergraduate education in urban sociology, demography, racial-ethnic relations, and social stratification/inequality. The main objective of this project will be creating an updated website where instructors and students can once again access the SimSeg Lite program and use it to run simulation experiments exploring how segregation arises from various social dynamics operating under urban-demographic conditions. There are several reasons to anticipate that a computer simulation of residential segregation has good prospects for enhancing undergraduate instruction. 1) The research literature in the areas draws on formal theory and computer models. 2) Computer simulations of segregation dynamics can reveal how macro outcomes can emerge from micro-level processes. 3) Simulations give students intuitive, easy-to-grasp introductions to complex dynamics. 4) Simulations introduce students to the process of conducting experiments to test hypotheses. 5) Simulations encourage students to think analytically to understand the outcomes produced by simulation experiments. 6) Simulations impart insights about sociological dynamics of segregation while minimizing the burdens of calculations and computations that would otherwise be required to gain the same insights.
2017
Danielle Lavin-Loucks, Valparaiso University
Safe Spaces and Trigger Warnings: The Negotiation of Sensitive Topics in the Classroom
This project explores the question, “what do we mean by ‘safe spaces’ in the university setting?” Initially used to protect marginalized groups from harassment/violence, the notion of safe spaces has taken on a new life, symbolic of an emerging culture war playing out not just in higher education, but in the media, politics, and social life. Depending on your political persuasion or ideology, the idea of safe spaces can have a positive or negative connotation. The often diametrically opposed views beg the question of whether we are talking about the same thing when we invoke the term. Without a clear definition of safe spaces, how can we begin to assess them? Thus, this project seeks to clarify a key higher education debate over safe spaces by defining the term in the context of the university, identifying associated trends in official policy, and simultaneously assessing the student experience as it relates to sensitive topics and safe spaces within the classroom. Lavin-Loucks will collect policy statements from 30 universities to understand the various means by which universities try to ensure learning environments that are both welcoming of sensitive and important topics but free of hate speech and harassment. She will then conduct a survey of students to assess their understanding of university policy and ultimately improve their classroom and learning experience.
Gretchen Purser and Nazanin Shahrokni, Syracuse University
Producing Citizen-Sociologists: Using Smartphones to Help Students “See” and “Do” Sociology
The ubiquity of the smartphone has given rise to “citizen-journalists” who are capable of recording and disseminating events in real time. While the smartphone has transformed the field of journalism, it remains an underutilized tool in the undergraduate sociology classroom. Purser and Shahrokni will pilot a curricular initiative aimed at producing “citizen-sociologists”: students trained to use their smartphones to see, capture, and analyze moments of sociological significance as they go about their day-to-day lives. In addition to capturing interesting dimensions of everyday life, the project also includes the students revisiting their digital captures and reflecting on their importance. Finally, students will then represent these images as data to their classmates. This analytical step helps facilitate a conversation regarding the sociological significance of their digital data. With the help of the fund, the co-investigators will begin a curricular redesign of two of their courses: the sociology of gender and the sociology of urban poverty. New modules will be designed that integrate the recording, display, and discussion of images into requirements and grade-producing assignments for the courses as well as a website that will function as a repository of exemplary work. Purser and Shahrokni will conduct an assessment of their endeavor through surveys of the students’ experience and learning outcomes.
2016
Susan Ferguson, Grinnell College, and Stephen Sweet, Ithaca College
Curriculum Mapping Tool to Advance Progressive Structures for Essential Learning Outcomes in the Sociology Major
Aligned with their position as members of the Liberal Learning 3rd Edition (LL3) Task Force and the Department Resources Group, Susan Ferguson and Steven Sweet plan to develop and test a curriculum mapping tool for departments. The tool will be used to guide sociology programs through the curriculum mapping process needed to both evaluate the extent that programs contain a progressive curricular structure and assess what revisions may be needed to achieve alignment with disciplinary best practices.
Albert S. Fu, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Assessing a Sociology Living Learning Community: Curriculum, Co-Curricular Activities, and a Culture of Good Writing
An incoming cohort of sociology students at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania will have the opportunity to join a living learning community. The goal of the community is to improve student writing by building a “culture of good writing” that begins at the start of the academic career. The students will live in the same residence hall, take the same classes, and participate in co-curricular activities. Assessment of the living learning community will consist of a mixed methods approach, including ongoing analyses of senior portfolios already in use at Kutztown. Fu will also collect data via reflective writing pieces.
Silvia Bartolic and Kamila Kolpashnikova, University of British Columbia
Quantitative Arts: Scientists by Nurture
This project is a response to the common student perception that learning quantitative methods is both difficult and unnecessary. To combat this perception, Bartolic and Kolpashnikova will use a flipped classroom approach and problem-based learning to actively engage students. Class time will be spent working on specific problems with hands-on assistance from the professor and teaching assistants while using an online platform to engage students in theory and concepts. The designed curriculum will be shared across their campus in the sociology teaching repository, submitted to ASA’s Teaching Resources and Innovations Library for Sociology (TRAILS), uploaded to a project website for use by interested faculty and teaching assistants globally.
Shannon Davis, George Mason University
The Construction of Perceived Research Competency among Sociology Undergraduates
This project explores students’ perceptions of competency with regard to their performance of scholarly research. By examining the individual and institutional correlates of perceived research competencies, sociologists can gain a deeper understanding of the specific mechanisms that influence perceived competency of undergraduates engaged in research. In addition to projecting students on a pathway beyond their degree, understanding processes that increase perceived student competency in scholarly research provides administrators with an basis of best practices to employ in mentoring programs and other curricular endeavors. Davis and an undergraduate research assistant will be analyzing data already collected from a survey administered at three universities.
2015
Molly Clever & Karen Miller, West Virginia Wesleyan College
Building Effective Service-Learning for Social Justice
The funds provided will assist Clever and Miller in developing the Social Justice Studies major at their college. They will hold training sessions with faculty to align with Jacoby’s social change model for leadership development and to implement the program in ways consistent with research on the high impact practices for service learning. Their goal is to ensure that their program is effective in engaging students and efficiently institutes pedagogically sound assessment tools.
Dennis J. Downey, California State University-Channel Islands
Cultivating Quantitative Literacy in the Introductory Course: Applying a Mathematics Education Perspective
In an effort to close the quantitative literacy gap, Downey will use the award to create, deliver, and assess supplemental video materials designed to cultivate quantitative literacy in a medium-sized Introduction to Sociology class. Motivated by the prevelant quantitative literacy gap on his campus as well as for many first-generation and immigrant students, Downey is committed to seeing his students build a strong foundation in order to complete the research assigned in the capstone course.
Naomi Spence, Lehman College CUNY
Latino Families in the U.S.: An Authentic Research Experience
Spence will use the grant to support the development of a pilot research classroom experience, with students involved in inquiry-based, active learning on a subject relevant to their community (Lehman College is a Hispanic-serving institution in a predominately minority area of the Bronx). Specifically, her students will engage in survey research on Latinos’ family formation attitudes. This pilot course will complement several departmental and university-wide efforts to build the research and critical thinking skills of students and provide guidance for the development of larger efforts.
2014
Jesse Holzman, Carolina Calvillo, Michael De Anda Muñiz, William Scarborough, Emily Ruehs , and Barbara Risman, University of Illinois at Chicago
Empowering High School Students through Teaching and Research
A group of graduate students from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) have partnered with Little Village High School in the south Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago. The joint program was aimed at both preparing students for college and developing active citizenship and community engagement. By creating an AP-like Sociology class and implementing sociological methodology in a community-based research project, the high school students produced college-level academic work while also critically analyzing the problems that face their community. Throughout the 2013 fall semester several graduate students from UIC served as mentors and advisors to the high school students, providing guidance and feedback throughout the research process. The grant will allow the high school students to present their research at the upcoming ASA Annual Meeting in San Francisco.
Danielle Kane, DePauw University
How Sociology Instructors Use Writing Assignments to Teach Critical Thinking Skills
While it is generally agreed that the study of sociology increases critical thinking ability, there is little empirical research on how specific sociology assignments cultivate this skill. Kane’s project will consist of interviews with sociology instructors about how they think about, design, and assess writing assignments and a content analysis of those assignments. This research seeks to answer four questions: what do sociology instructors want to accomplish in assigning writing?; What do their assignments look like and why?; how do instructors assess writing?; and to what extent do instructors draw on campus resources? This project aims to serve the need of scholars who are teaching sociology to increase the impact of writing assignments.
James Kitts, University of Massachusetts
Interactive tools for Teaching, Learning, and Investigating Dynamic Models of Social Processes
The grant will aid Kitts to develop hands-on computer tools that allow students (and researchers) to explore social processes and social theories using dynamic computer simulations. Kitts believes that understanding the link between micro-level interactions and macro-level dynamics could have profound impact on the ways we engage in basic sociological research. An increasing number of sociologists are using computational models to clarify theoretical problems in social dynamics, often by applying computer simulations of sociological theories. Although a handful of interdisciplinary centers teach these tools, only a few sociology programs currently offer training in computational modeling, and this training is also not available in other departments or disciplines. The grant will support the development of a suite of computer simulation tools for classroom use that will be disseminated online for free.
2013
Stephanie Medley-Rath, Lake Land College
Reducing the Financial Burden of College: Are Open Education Resources a Viable Option?
Medley-Rath will conduct research on alternative options to the textbook rental system currently in use at her institution. Her quasi-experimental design will seek to discover whether using Open Education Resources (OER) results in comparable learning outcomes among students while keeping costs reasonably low. In the fall semester at Lake Land Community College, Open Education Resources will be employed in two sections of Introduction to Sociology and traditional textbooks will be used in the other two (one online and the other web-facilitated). The project is important both because Introduction to Sociology is the sociology course most frequently taken by college students, and because a significant portion, if not the majority, of those students are enrolled at a community college where a large majority of students receive financial aid.
David Blouin, Indiana University-South Bend, and Allison Moss, University of Illinois at Chicago
Formal and Informal Teacher Training in U.S. and Canadian Sociology Graduate Departments, Revisited 20 Years Later
Blouin and Moss will conduct a mixed-methods investigation of graduate teacher training. They will first determine the extent to which departments employ students as teachers, whether departments offer graduate student training or preparation, and, if so, what that training looks like. To understand the effect of training Blouin and Moss will then conduct qualitative interviews with sociology graduate students to investigate the differences among the various types of teacher trainings discovered in the first part of their study. With only 50 percent of graduate programs offering formal teacher training, their findings can have important implications for the discipline, higher education, and more specifically graduate teacher training.
Tracy Ore, St. Cloud State University
The Use of Peer Learning Assistants in the Large Introductory Sociology Classroom to Support Student Learning
In an effort to keep up with changes in resources and demographics at her university, Ore will incorporate undergraduate Peer Learning Assistants in her 200-student Introductory to Sociology course. The project seeks to facilitate teaching and learning activities and assistance not available directly from the instructor. Ore will identify with the student’s personal and professional goals and help them see how sociological knowledge can be applied to their future work. Her project will attempt to overcome the barriers to learning many of her students face.. She will use her university’s resources, such as the Multicultural Student Services and the First Year and Transitions Program, to identity Peer Learning Assistants who represent the populations in her course as well those who initially struggled in her Introduction course but ultimately succeeded.
Ashley Rondini, Transylvania University
Health, Illness, and Community-Assessing Critical Consciousness and Learning Outcomes in a Multi-Site, Thematically Organized Service Learning Course
Rondini will use her funds to assess student learning outcomes of her service-learning course, “Health, Illness and Community.” She will evaluate the experiences of a multi-site, integrated learning approach. Additionally, she will be using qualitative interviews with her students to assess the development of “critical consciousness” in relation to the conceptual frame of health as a social justice issue. Service learning pedagogy encourages students to ask questions about the connections between social structures and societal problems. Her course, in particular, will help students cultivate their sociological imagination and use it to examine topics regarded to health and health care and their multi-dimensional aspects and sociological significance.
2012
Janet P. Stamatel and Christopher M. Huggins, University of Kentucky
Comparing the Effectiveness of Lecturing vs. Team-Based Learning for Teaching Introductory Criminology
Stamatel and Huggins will assess how well the team-based learning (TBL) method works in the social sciences. They will also assess whether team-based learning is better suited to accomplish some learning goals more than others. The project will conduct a formal outcome evaluation comparing two methods of teaching—a lecture in a more traditional classroom and team-based learning. Team-based learning creates an environment where learning basic content is completed by students individually outside of class. Each method (lecture and TBL) will be used by the principal investigators to teach one section of an Introduction to Crime, Law and Deviance course. The common learning goals for each course are: 1) understanding the meaning of core concepts of sociological study of crime, law, and deviance 2) drawing informed conclusions about patterns of crime and victimization in the United States, and 3) comparing, contrasting, and applying theories of criminal behavior. The extent to which these outcomes have been achieved under each teaching method will be measured using in class tests, final grades and course evaluations.
Molly Talcott, California State University-Los Angeles, Dana Collins California State University-Fullerton, Sylvanna Falcon, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Sharmila Lodhia, Santa Clara University
Using the Case Method of Teaching to Promote Active Student Learning
Falcón, Talcott, Collins, and Lodhia have used the case method at their various institutions for nearly 10 years. Their project asserts that the case method approach to teaching encourages students to become more visionary problem solvers, and to identify multiple perspectives on varied social issues. However, the current selections of case study materials are either out of date, or, not geared towards teaching undergraduate students in the social sciences. In this project eight new and original case studies geared toward teaching undergraduate students and focused on a centrally important problem within sociology, gender/women’s studies, and ethnic studies will be developed. The case studies will be of use in a wide range of courses in both disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields including sociology, political science, women’s and gender studies, ethnic studies, and American studies. The long-term goal of the project is to develop an online archive of case study topics and teaching materials for easy dissemination to interested teaching faculty.
2011
Natalie Byfield, St. Johns University
The Efficacy of Personal Writing as a Tool for Teaching Sociology
Byfield will use her funding from the Howery Teaching Enhancement Grant to continue her study of the effectiveness of using memoir writing as a tool for teaching sociology. Using a teaching method based on Erika Duncan’s Herstory pedagogy, her study will examine the ways in which people use language or other communicative actions to build the social structures in our world.
Elizabeth Lyman and Carla Corroto, Radford University
Faculty and the Application of Service Learning
Lyman and Corroto will use the Howery Grant to look at the distribution of service learning components among faculty and its implications. The study will answer two questions: (1) Who is doing the work of service learning? and (2) Are faculty who use service learning in their classes any more or less satisfied with their jobs than those who do not use it? They will be analyzing 2008 data from the Higher Education Research Institute on Faculty Performance and Educational Equity as well as qualitative data collected from the heads of service-learning departments in Virginia public universities.
2010
Liz Grauerholz, University of Central Florida
The Impact of Institutional Changes on Teaching
In this study Grauerholz will conduct a series of interviews to explore the extent to which increasing consumerist attitudes around higher education impact teaching practices and expectations for students. Her study will first examine if sociology instructors perceive that major changes in the academy and classroom have occurred and the extent to which perceptions are shaped by institutional contexts and status characteristics. She will then explore the ways in which instructors perceive that their teaching has changed in response to such things as increased class size and increased emphasis on student evaluations in promotion and tenure decisions. Finally, the research will examine which pedagogical practices are believed to be the most effective responses in different institutional settings.
Scott G. McNall and Cynthia Siemsen, California State University-Chico
Understanding Rapid Climate Change: Causes Consequences and Solutions
This project works to integrate the issue of rapid climate change into the sociology curriculum by creating a faculty learning community. That community, in turn, will revise nine key sociology courses to expose both sociology and non-sociology students to a systematic sociological approach to the study of the causes, consequences, and the solutions of rapid climate change. Faculty from the California State University-Chico Department of Sociology who teach the following courses will constitute the learning community: Introductory Sociology, Classical Social Theory, Sociology of Wealth and Inequality, Ethnicity and Nationalism, Population, Social Movements, Political Sociology, Environmental Sociology, and Sociology of World Affairs.
Angela Harvey, Ohio State University-Newark
An Evaluation of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program
The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is a national initiative directed at transforming ways of thinking about crime and justice. This program was established in 1997 to bring college students and incarcerated individuals together as peers in a classroom setting that emphasizes dialogue and critical thinking. Harvey’s project involves comparing a criminology course taught in the traditional manner with one based on the Inside-Out pedagogy. Pre- and post- surveys will be used to measure whether the Inside-Out course achieves the goals laid out in the program’s guidelines. Specifically, it will compare students’ perceptions about individuals who are incarcerated, as well as their knowledge and perceptions about the U.S. criminal justice system. It will also compare student’s long-term education and career goals and knowledge and experience in social policy and advocacy.
2009
Kathleen McKinney, Illinois State University
A Multi-Institutional Study of Research Experience Capstone Courses in Sociology
This project will assess student learning and student perceptions of a one-semester, required sociology research experience capstone courses at seven different institutions that vary in location, size, public-private status, and co-ed or same-sex status. Since little is known about the outcomes of research-based capstone courses, McKinney’s work is poised to contribute significantly to the scholarship of teaching and learning literature and to provide insights that could improve curricular planning and course design across the discipline.
Carissa M. Froyum and Marybeth C. Stalp, University of Northern Iowa
Implementing a Teacher Development Pilot Program for MA Students
This study will implement and test the effectiveness of a small pilot program that prepares MA students to teach core sociology courses at community colleges in Iowa. The proposed pilot program will have three central components: a teaching-focused proseminar course, a congruent teaching practicum, and a guided teaching internship. The objectives of Froyum and Stalp’s program are to prepare MA students to teach core sociology courses at community colleges; train them to reflect upon and address “positionality” within the classroom; and engage them in the scholarship of teaching and learning. The project responds to the growing number of community college students in Iowa and across the country by seeking to advance the practice of preparing competent and pedagogically attuned community college educators.
Suzzane S. Hudd, Quinnipiac University
Arriving at a Sociology of Writing
When sociologists reference the deeper role of writing and its contribution to the development of our students’ critical thinking skills, they commonly refer to research in composition theory. This is despite the fact that a good deal of sociological scholarship onbpedagogical approaches to the assignment of writing already exists. This project will bring together the literature on writing in the disciplines (i.e., the theories of compositionists) with the scholarship of sociologists to initiate a more meaningful and multi-disciplinary dialogue about student writing in sociology that will expose the “hidden curriculum” surrounding the written work professors assign. Through interviews with sociologists across a wide-array of institutions, Hudd seeks to develop a “rhetoric of sociology.” She hopes to define a “writing praxis” that supports this rhetoric. By treating writing as a socio-cultural phenomenon and linking it to the critical thinking skills it is intended to develop, she seeks to expose the shared aims between sociological writing and other disciplines. Hudd hopes to facilitate the compositional transition from one discipline to another.
2008
Michelle Inderbitzin, Oregon State University
Michelle launched a project that incorporates an extensive service-learning component into an upper-level sociology course on juvenile delinquency. Her students will work directly with delinquent youth in Corvallis, OR, to develop community benefit projects based on the concept of restorative justice. A portion of the TEF grant will be used to provide seed money to launch the projects designed in the course. The course aims to develop a collaborative learning environment in which delinquent youth will experience college-level academic work and OSU students will learn from the particular experiences of their younger classmates.
Ronald L. Mize, Cornell University
Published and promoted student website projects from courses on comparative racial and ethnic relations in the United States and comparative social inequality. He intends for the projects completed in his courses to be brought to a broad public audience through the Task Force on Encouraging Public Sociology and Cornell University websites. Students have produced projects that address race and higher education, mass media, prisons, and immigration legislation. In the upcoming social inequality course, students will create project websites that analyze the production and consumption effects of commodities such as coffee, clothing, chocolate, and pharmaceuticals. TEF funding will be used to develop a central, polished website for the ongoing collection and publicizing of the student projects.
2007
Wendy Cadge, David Cunningham, and Sara Shostak, Brandeis University
The group will pilot a program to integrate the teaching and learning of undergraduate and graduate research methods. Graduate students will be given the opportunity to serve as research consultants and project leaders in the undergraduate research class. The undergraduate students will have the opportunity to work with the graduate students in small research project groups, enhancing the “learning by doing” nature of research.
Karl Kunkel, Missouri State University
Karl will conduct a focus group assessment of a CD-ROM and active learning teaching strategy for a course on “Crime, Class, Race, and Justice.” All course material that was previously delivered in lectures will be turned into voice-over presentations on a CD-ROM, which students could use and review at their own pace. Students will view specific presentations prior to class so that the entire class time can be devoted to interactive learning exercises. The project will study whether the combination of better organized lecture material on CD-ROM and active learning within the class time enhances learning.
Kathleen McKinney, Illinois State University
Kathleen will conduct a longitudinal study of a cohort of sociology majors in order to research their development of identities as sociologists, their ability to use their sociological imaginations, their engagement in the discipline of sociology, and their sense of being autonomous learners. Self-administered questionnaires, face-to-face interviews, learning reflection essays, a sociological imagination essay question, and the Motivated Learning Strategies Questionnaire will be used to assess the development of the given cohort of majors.
Trina Rose and Sue Wortmann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Trina and Sue will investigate the effects of using Personal Response Systems (PRS), also known as clickers, in large classrooms. Over the course of two years the devices will be used in large lower-level sociology classrooms, using an experimental design to determine their effects on attendance, active learning, community, student grades, and instructor evaluations. The project should shed light on whether these PRS devices are useful in sociology classrooms and whether they enhance student learning as an active pedagogy.
