Recommended Websites for General Sociology Teaching



Tips for Teaching Sociology

The First Day of Class

• The first day of class is crucial for establishing your expectations. After passing out and clearly explaining the syllabus, immediately engage students in a small lecture, discussion, or activity --- however you plan to organize the class, provide a preview on the very first day

• It is always simpler to begin with more rigid expectations for student behavior and later relax them than it is to begin with lax expectations and then try to make them more rigid as the semester progresses.

• The first day of class presents you with the opportunity to introduce yourself to students. Before entering the classroom, think about the types of aesthetic management you wish to use. It is suggested that instructors who appear to be quite young make an effort to dress more professionally on the first few days of class than they might otherwise.

• Appropriate self-disclosure can help build rapport with your students. However, before the first day of class, you must decide how much you wish to disclose about yourself. A good rule of thumb is to never tell students anything about yourself that you would not mind having printed on the front page of the campus newspaper.

• The first day is a good opportunity to begin learning student names. A “name game” may be helpful, though some instructors are able to learn names by simply calling roll for the first few classes. Learning student names will assist in classroom management, building rapport, and facilitating classroom discussions and exercises.

Lectures Tips

• Sociology is a fun, interesting topic. Many of the topics lend themselves well to student involvement. However, it is also necessary to communicate a certain amount of information. Therefore, active lectures in which students are asked to participate in the lecture process to varying degrees can work quite well. Students may be asked to define terms, provide examples of concepts, or even take responsibility for “teaching” a small portion of the lesson to other students.

• Instructors frequently stop mid-lecture to ask “are there any questions?” Inevitably, the question is met with student silence. Instead, try saying, “Ok, we will move on to the next topic of lecture once the class has asked three questions about the last topic.” This gives students an “excuse” to ask the questions that they may have been apprehensive to raise otherwise.

• Lectures can be made more interesting by peppering them with examples, situations, and concepts to which all of the students can relate. Topics such as “living in a dorm” or “eating at the campus cafeteria” or “going to a party” tend to work well. Be careful using references from pop culture as they may not be recognizable to all students. If you find students referencing pop culture, you should have them explain the reference for everyone. Then, once they are already talking, it will be an easy segue to then ask them to draw the connection between their reference and the material.

• Always include some information in your lectures that is not in the text. Doing so helps keep the brightest students engaged in the lecture.

• To help facilitate student note-taking, consider giving students “guided notes”. Guided notes are abbreviated copies of your own outlines that may include terms, definitions, or brief examples. In addition, there should be space for students write in their own elaborations or examples of course concepts. In fact, you can choose to leave more space for those concepts you find most challenging or see as most central to the course to give students a visual depiction of how much weight they should assign to each topic during their studies.

• If you rely heavily on lecture, consider stopping every 10-15 minutes and asking students to turn to the person nearest them. Students should then spend 2 minutes discussing what they felt the most important points of the recent lecture were. A few groups could be asked to report their findings back to the class.

• To help students learn to take notes, consider distributing the notes you would have taken over your lecture once or twice AFTER students take their own. This will allow them to gauge whether they are capturing the information you most want them to write down.

Discussion Tips

• Before the first discussion, help the students come up with a list of rules for classroom discussions. Be sure that things such as “no talking when others are talking” and “no personal attacks on any individual or group” and “provide evidence to back up your opinions” are included. You may want to print the rules up and have all students sign their agreement to the list.

• Before beginning the semester, decide what types of discussions you wish to have in your class. You may wish to take on a strong role as a clear facilitator, calling on students and regulating the discussion explicitly, you may prefer that students have their own discussions with your role being just to begin the conversation, or you may hope for something in between. Regardless, be sure to clearly communicate your expectations to the students before the first discussion because the structure of the first discussion will likely be the structure of all subsequent ones.

• Often, quieter students have much to contribute but can be afraid to enter the conversation. Try calling on them explicitly to begin the discussion by sharing their responses to an open ended question. Alternatively, ask them to defend counterpoint positions within the discussion.

• To integrate quieter students, you can also put students into small discussion groups with a prompt or series of discussion questions. Then, after they discuss, call on the quiet student to share some highlights from the group discussion. This way, they will not have to share their own opinion, if this is what makes them uncomfortable.

• The opposite problem can occur with students who monopolize discussions. Sometimes simply saying, “Let’s see…we’ve heard quite a bit from you today, [monopolizing student’s name], but not quite as much from [quieter students’ names]. Let’s find out what they have to say on the topic.” It may be necessary to speak to the monopolizing student outside of class. Be sure to thank him or her for their excitement and participation and be honest with them about your expected appropriate level of participation in a discussion. Some students prefer for you to provide a covert signal if you feel they have said too much for the day, or set a numerical limit on the amount of comments they can make in any one discussion. Ask them if they would prefer one of these options or if they would rather self-censor.

• If all students are being silent on a topic, silently count to ten slowly, and then rephrase the question. Then, wait as long as necessary for students to begin talking. Eventually, someone will speak up.

• Even the best planned discussion can get heated with some sociological topics. If you find a discussion getting too heated, stop the students and ask them each to take out a sheet of paper and spend 3-5 minutes writing out their thoughts on the current topic or on the next topic you wish to discuss. The “time out” that this provides serves to calm the mood of the classroom. Alternatively, you can ask students to spend the 3-5 minutes defending (on paper) the view that was brought up that is most different from their own. Doing so can help students understand different sides to the argument.

Assignments and Exams

• In order to demonstrate that you take seriously the responsibility of students in the course, you may want to assign a small assignment that will be due on the second week. By requiring students to begin engaging with the material outside of class so soon in the semester, you are sending a clear message that you feel the material is very important and that simply reading the chapters the night before the test will not be sufficient.

• It is crucial that assignments and exam questions are clear. Ask a colleague to read through an assignment or exam before you administer it for the first time in order to be certain that it is unambiguous. Even after the exam, ask your students for input on the questions. You can remove questions that were unclear or figure out ways to word them better for the next semester. You can also proofread future exams with their points in mind.

• Clearly communicate your expectations about plagiarism and what constitutes academic misconduct. You may even want to have students sign and hand in a recognition of your university’s policy. In general, the more specific the assignment, the more difficult it is for students to plagiarize their work.

• Ask students to turn in annotated bibliographies of their sources a few weeks before their major papers are due. This will help ensure that they cannot wait until the last possible second to get started on their papers.

• In small classes, honors classes, or courses that you wish to conduct in a more “seminar” format, you could choose to spend the first day of class allowing the students to determine the format of the assignments and exams in the class. Provide them with some possibilities (e.g., take-home essay versus multiple choice exams or 2 large assignments versus 5 smaller ones) and allow them to vote on which direction they would like the class to take. Then, you can provide a syllabus tailored to their requests at the second class period.

Tips for Online Courses

• One detriment of online classes is the impersonality that often results from the format. This can lead to increased levels of academic misconduct or lowered levels of politeness through emails and discussion board postings. If possible, schedule one or two in-person meetings throughout the course to explain your expectations and answer questions about major course projects. If personal meetings are not possible, try to schedule a few real-time class chats or video conferences throughout the semester.

• Because the temptation to procrastinate can be greater in online courses, you may want to assign several smaller course projects that are due at various times throughout the course. If you assign one large course project, you may want to ask students to turn in drafts of various parts at specific time points throughout the semester to help them stay on track.

• If possible, hold virtual office hours for your students. You can do this by utilizing real-time chats. If a real-time chat feature is not available through your course software, you can download and use a free program like Instant Messenger for this purpose.

• Some universities require students to take online exams in front of a webcam to ensure that they are not using outside resources for assistance on the test. If this is not possible, you may decide to allow students to use their textbooks on the exams, but provide them with brief windows of time in which to test to help ensure that they must know the material ahead of time or make the exams essay format, which would require them to focus more on application and synthesis of the material rather than recall.

• To minimize the threat of students “assisting” one another on assignments, do not return graded assignments with your comments until all students have submitted their work.

• If you choose to use a discussion board in an introductory online class, post an initial question or prompt each week for students to respond to. Further, you should provide students with examples of acceptable initial postings and responses to each other’s postings to ensure that responses go beyond a simple “I agree.” or “That sounds good.” You may want to consider providing students with two separate due dates: one date by which they must post their own response to the weekly prompt and a later date by which they must respond to the posts of their peers. Otherwise, many students are likely to wait until the last moment to post, leaving one another with nothing to respond to. Finally, provide students lots of feedback early in the course about the appropriateness of their discussion board postings, just as you would with any other assignments.

Tips for the Large Lecture Course

• Create the feel of a smaller course by having students sit in smaller groups. You can also foster a small feel by assigning students to unmonitored study or discussion groups.

• To keep students engaged in a lecture-based class, incorporate brief media clips into your lecture. Using YouTube videos or segments from This American Life would provide short breaks from lecturing. It will also reengage students into the class. These would also make great exam material to emphasize attendance.

• Do not be afraid to ask for questions in a large lecture class. If there are no questions, you can ask for three examples or applications of the material before you return to the lecture.

• If you use PowerPoint presentations, make sure there is a significant difference between the presentation slides and the lecture. You want to encourage students to attend class and be able to reward them for being engaged in the lecture.

• Start each class with a 5 minute review. Early in the semester, assign each student a topic and a day that they must provide a 2-3 sentence summary (a definition and an example/application) of the previous day’s material for the course. You can then spend the first 5 minutes of class having several students share their 30 second summaries. This will personalize the class for students and serve as a refreshing way to integrate the students in an otherwise impersonal setting.

Recommended Websites for Teaching Sociology

Sociology Online



Features essays and information on the sociological imagination and the origins of sociology

The Argus Sociology Clearinghouse



Provides ratings of general sociological websites based on the resources offered, organization, etc.

Sociology UK



Provides free online resources for teaching sociological concepts, including lateral thinking puzzles to help students analyze everyday situations from a sociological perspective

Recommended Teaching Guides

Bach, Rebecca and Betsy Lucal (Eds.) 2002. Managing Hostility in the Classroom: A

Book of Resources for Teaching

Caldwell, Agnes (Ed.) 2004. Critical Thinking in Sociology.

Davis, Barbara Gross. 1993. Tools for Teaching.

Dorn, Dean. 1996. Voices from the Classroom: Interviews with Thirty-Six Sociologists

About Teaching

Howard, Jay (Ed.) 2004. Discussion in the College Classroom.

Nenga, Sandi Kawecka and Edward Kain (Eds.). 2004. Innovative Techniques for

Teaching Sociological Concepts (Fourth Edition)

Stokes, Kay, Keith Roberts, and Marjory Kinney (Eds.) 2002. Writing in the

Undergraduate Sociology Curriculum: A Guide for Teachers.

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