Emily K. Carian

Select Teaching Materials

Feel free to borrow and adapt these teaching materials. I am happy to share others by request.

Syllabi

HONORS

  • Research Proposal Instructions and Rubric: Summative assessment for the fall quarter class. Students develop a proposal for an original research project, to be completed during the rest of the academic year.

  • Thesis Instructions and Rubric: Summative assessment for the spring quarter class and Honors program. Students write an original research paper.

  • Winter Quarter Planning: A tool to help students plan for independent research during the winter quarter.

  • Developing a Topic, Question, and Problem: In pairs, students practice coming up with a research question and problem. Individually, students work on developing their own topic, question, and problem.

  • Reverse Outlining a Literature Review: In small groups, students reverse outline the literature review of Allison Daminger’s “The Cognitive Dimension of Household Labor” to explore the purpose and organization of the literature review.

  • Reading and Evaluating Findings Excerpts (and the Excerpts): Individually or in small groups, students evaluate real Findings sections from sociological papers to better understand how to provide good evidence in their own theses.

  • Reading and Evaluating Example Conclusions (and the Excerpts): Individually or in small groups, students evaluate real Conclusion sections from sociological papers to better understand how to write an effective conclusion for their own theses.

Social Psychology

  • Podcast Project Instructions and Rubric: Summative assessment. In teams, students create a short podcast that applies a social psychological concept to a current event or social phenomenon (both of their choice) through a series of scaffolded assignments. Includes links to example assignments. Note: As a quarter class at UCI, I do not require students to record the podcast; I did have students record the podcast when I taught this as a semester class at CSUSB.

    • Example: Meeting in the Middle, in which Jennifer Frank, Bethanie Gonzalez, and Sergio Perez discuss gender inequality in household work through the lens of social norms

    • Example: White Lens Media, in which Katelyn Dodds, Darssy Franco, and Michelle Morales discuss media representations of Black Americans through the lens of stereotypes

    • Example: You’re Hearing About It Today, in which Apryl Boone, Matt Guerra, and Sidney Wirz discuss vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans through the lens of racism

    • Example: You Belong in the Kitchen, in which Betsy Garcia, Aimee Orozco-Perez, and Jailene Yerena discuss women in gaming/Gamergate through the lens of stereotype threat

  • Discussion Board Questions: Students respond to one question each week.

  • Meme Assignment: Students create original memes related to social psychological concepts.

Masculinities

  • Masculinities in Magazines Project Instructions and Rubric: Summative assessment. In teams, students analyze articles from men’s magazines about the topic of their choice, explain how masculinity is represented in them, and relate what they find to key theories from the course through a series of scaffolded assignments.

Methods

  • Variables and Levels of Measurement: Pre-quiz/post-quiz. Students complete the worksheet identifying levels of measurement, independent variables, and dependent variables before lecture. After lecture, students revise their answers.

  • Drawing Conclusions: In groups, students make predictions about research questions then use SPSS output to draw conclusions. Provides practice in communicating conclusions in writing.

  • Recognizing Elements of Experimental Research: Jigsaw activity. Students form five groups. Groups discuss one of five summaries of experimental research. Groups identify aspects of experimental research (research question, concepts, variables, etc) to become “experts” on one of the experiments. Students form new groups with experts familiar with the other experiments and report what they learned.

Statistics

  • Research Project: Summative assessment designed in collaboration with Jurgita Abromaviciute. In pairs, students choose a research question of interest, operationalize concepts, complete analyses, and write a report. Includes theoretical/pedagogical framework, instructions and rubric, GSS data extract, codebook, and a plan for assessing the effectiveness of the project on student learning outcomes.

  • “How Sociologists Use” readings: Students become familiar with how sociologists use t-tests, chi-square tests of independence, and linear regression through these short readings.

  • Fundamentals of Probability: Students practice calculating probabilities and compare them to real data. Students explore the relationship between sample size and random variation.

  • Central Limit Theorem: Students learn the intuition behind the central limit theorem using dice. Students roll a die five times, record their rolls, and calculate the average of their rolls. Students plot a histogram of their rolls, and the class plots a histogram of the class’s averages. We repeat this exercise, rolling the die 15, then 30 times.

Sociology of Gender

Qualitative Methods