Peer Review

Teaching the Social World

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This site is part of The Society Pages site, which includes many valuable resources. This particular site focuses on teaching sociology. It includes syllabi, readings, video, teaching tips and articles.
Type of Material:: Learning Object Repository.
Recommended Uses:: The site is intended as material for helping instructors improve a course or to provide students interested in sociology with more material for self study.
Technical Requirements:: Tested with Chrome and Firefox.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: The purpose of the site is to provide supplemental materials for those teaching sociology. The site has many categories of support materials -- writing aids, research guides and readings are included among other resources.
Target Student Population:: This is targeted toward instructors.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: None.

Rating:
Strengths:: The materials are well-organized and numerous. They are logically presented by theme with the most recent additions dating to the very recent past. There is a wide variety of options available for instructors to assist them in developing excellent sociology courses. The Course Guides link information from Sociological Images to specific topics in a variety of courses, including Introduction to Sociology. The directions for in-class exercises are thorough and offer topics for further discussion.
Concerns:: At least one subheading (Assignments) has no material in it.

Rating:
Strengths:: This site offers insight into techniques for effective teaching and provides instructors with guidelines for being successful in the classroom. The site acts as a mini-seminar in teaching sociology. As a tool for teachers it has many uses, from suggesting possible topics of discussion in class to ideas for pointers for teaching writing. It would be a valuable resource, particularly for someone relatively new to teaching sociology.
Concerns:: It has little in the way of formal declarations of objectives, goals, or assessment. These materials are intended to be used in support of other lessons.

Rating:
Strengths:: The material is well presented. The topics are immediately engaging and visually appealing. The interface is intuitive and familiar to anyone who uses web content. The menu buttons are easy to navigate to locate relevant information. Tags are provided to quickly access specific topics -- marriage, inequality, crime, etc. An archive is searchable by month and year. It has posts dating back to 2008.
Concerns:: Current articles are provided in a blog format. Sometimes it is difficult to find information by scrolling the posts.

Other Issues and Comments:: The irregularity of updates for some of the material may be a problem for some users, and the scarcity of material under some of the subheadings limits the functionality of the site somewhat, but as a whole this is a very good product.
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