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Showing posts from 2010

Fall Prime Time Schedule

The fall 2010 primetime schedule is available on TV Guide's website: http://www.tvguide.com/special/fall-preview/fall-schedule.aspx 16 sitcoms 12 Reality Shows 3 Sports Shows 48 Dramas 4 animated comedies 5 news shows A lot of drama!

Census Quick Facts

Need a quick fact from the census? Try http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html . Helpful data on race, gender, education, and disability, among other things.

TV by the Numbers

http://tvbythenumbers.com/ is a great resource for anyone studying the television industry. I'm particularly following their daily postings of the Nielsen overnights. http://tvbythenumbers.com/category/ratings/tv-ratings-nielsen-overnight-tv-show-ratings Until this site came along, TV ratings could actually be pretty hard to track down consistently.

Attendance Policies

A few years ago, in one class, I tried not grading for attendance but found the result to be that students skipped class at high levels, paid for it on assignments, and the resulting average was so low that I looked more like a bad teacher than a tough one. I also paid a price in emails and office hours spent re-hashing what I'd covered in class and I was embarrassed that my final evals indicated that very few of the enrolled students filled them out because attendance was low. So I do grade for attendance and I struggle through how to do it. My current system keeps attendance and participation separate. For attendance, I assign a fraction of a point based on the overall number of class meetings in the semester. This fall for instance, my class meets a total of 28 times, so each class is assigned 1/4th of a point. For every class attended, the student earns .25 points, up to the total of 7 points. Easy enough. The problem is, some students are going to miss sometimes, and de

Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film

http://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/ This is a good resource for studying women in popular culture. The research reports--The Celluloid Ceiling (film) and Boxed In (TV)--are particularly good. They are very basic but provide straight-forward analysis that is often hard to find. What the Center does well is track women's representation on both sides of the camera. It's very helpful to remember that female characters in TV and film are often authored by male writers, directors, and videographers.

Designing a Research Intensive Class

I'm re-designing my course on popular culture for this fall to make it a research-intensive class. That's not a technical designation at Temple, the way that writing-intensive is, but it is a helpful way for me to think about bringing students into the data collection process. Until now, the course was always writing-intensive, so I guided students through the process of producing a sociology paper, but with a data set that included only 2 cultural objects--television shows, songs, magazines, films, etc.--that provided a useful comparison in terms of a sociological issue such as race, gender, or class. For the research-intensive version, students will be performing weekly content analyses of prime time television. I'm spending the summer writing the proposal, developing the protocols, and creating the coding sheet and codebook. I'm trying to develop a process for teaching research that--like my process for teaching writing--is transferable from one class to another

Should Teachers Be Warm and Fuzzy?

I received my Spring 2010 evaluations yesterday. They were the best I've ever had, which was great. But in the midst of the positive comments, multiple students complained that I was cold and unapproachable, and uninterested in hearing their problems. This all true. I'm not a warm and fuzzy teacher, and I'm not flexible about the standards for the class. Despite what they think, I do wish the best for my students. But I am very aware of my role is in their lives: I'm their sociology professor. I'm not their father, their counselor, their friend, or their confidant. I think I'm really good at teaching them sociology and I know I'd be pretty cruddy at doing those other things. My instinct is to ignore the comments and focus on the positive, as well as the critical feedback that strikes me as more constructive. But I'm curious why students feel compelled to critique me for my warmth, and lack thereof.

Tenure Kills Trees

I recently submitted my tenure paperwork. By the time tenure rolls around, it's too late to worry about publishing. Instead, you have to worry about printing. There is a mountain of documentation that needs to be submitted. If I could go back 5 years and give myself some advice, I'd suggest collecting the following, and reviewing it once a year: 1. Printouts of my listings in the programs for every conference I went to 2. One good email or letter for each service activity I performed (ideally a thank-you letter, otherwise, an exemplary email) 3. A citation report for each of my articles using both JCR and Google Scholar. 4. A journal impact assessment for the journals I've published in, tracking impact factor, number of libraries that hold the journal, whether indexed and whether refereed 5. A short paragraph or two on each of my publications, explaining why I wrote them and what they contributed 6. A printout verifying every internal and external award I received, and

Grade Inflation Strikes Louisiana

According to this post on USA Today , biology professor Dominique Homberger was removed from her courses mid-semester for grading too strictly. Homberger has taught at LSU for 30 years, is a full-professor, and has never received warnings or any other sort of intervention from the administration in the past. University's publish no guidelines on how many students should pass (or fail) a course in a given semester, nor are there established baselines for how much a passing student should learn. We rely on academic freedom and peer review: she has the freedom to set standards and devise methods; her peers are charged with reviewing her performance at various intervals (tenure, promotion, raises, etc.). This intervention by LSU administration undermines academic freedom and also undercuts the value of peer review. Personally, I am opposed to instructional styles that fail to challenge students and I am also opposed to challenging students through trickery. Our task is to promote

Email as a Crutch

Increasingly, I find that some students use email as a way to get my approval for all creative decisions they have to make for their assignments. Obviously, we didn't have email when I was in college, so I have taken the emails for granted as a logical technological development. But now I'm paying more attention and putting my foot down at this abuse of emails. Students need to think for themselves, make their own decisions, and be prepared to face consequences. I don't think this warrants any new policy on the syllabus, but rather a deliberateness in my response. Instead of approving particular decisions, I'm going to respond to these questions with one of my own: What decision are leaning towards and why? Also, why are you hesitating? I can then focus on whether or not they are thinking about the subject on the right terms, but still require them to come to their own conclusions.

Common Student Writing Issues

Produced this feedback for my students and thought other might find it useful. If you have additions, post 'em! Avoid parenthetical expressions. If it's worth saying, say it in the text of your paper. Most people skip over the parentheses as they read. Save parentheses for citations. Avoid lists and pairs that add text without adding meaning. Examples: "culture and society," "discussions and debates," "issues, topics, and themes." Use first and last name on first usage, and last name thereafter. People who; object that. The tendency is to use 'that' for everything, including people, resulting in statements such "people that like this TV show will...." Instead, phrase it as "people who like this TV show will...." Double-space everything, including footnotes, box quotes, and references. You should always double-space anything for which you will receive feedback. Set your word processor defaults to 12pt. Times New R

Tips for Teaching Social Theory

Social theory can often feel too abstract for many students, particularly when it is disconnected from empirical research. These tricks have worked in my classroom to make the theory feel more tangible and more usable. 1. Coding the article. The basic components of a theory reading are often harder to find than those for a research article. Student readers may need extra help in finding those components so I push them to identify the following: The Question: The Assumptions: The Answer to the Question (presumably the argument): The Argumentation/Evidence (empirical, ideological, logical, practical?) The Conversation in Which it Operates: The Hook (what makes this answer to the question better and different?): The Irritation (What's under the author's craw? What pissed them off so much they had to write this piece?): Key Words with Definitions/Conceptualizations: 2. Mapping the Theory: I ask students to draw a map of the theoretical frame that is presented, identifying things

Student Evaluations Part 2

Today I'm examining the evaluations for my undergraduate course from last semester. The course is called Development of Sociological Thought, but it's basically the theory requirement for our sociology majors. The section was capped at 30. I pushed a few students with especially low grades to withdraw early. 25 students completed the course, of which 20 completed the evaluations. I should note that I ask students to complete evaluations at the beginning of class, rather than at the end. When students complete evaluations at the end of class, the form becomes the only barrier to leaving the classroom, so they tend to complete them fairly quickly. By distributing evaluations at the end of class, the forms become a way of delaying my lecture, so they are happy to take their time and give lots of thoughtful feedback. Here's the summary of the evaluations. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of students who made the comment. What worked well? Discussions (8) Fe

Student Evaluations

Today, Temple released student evaluations from last semester. I taught two courses last semester--an upper-level undergraduate seminar on social theory and a graduate seminar on classical social theory. Reading evaluations can be tricky. The self-critical eye tends to be drawn towards particularly damning comments. The self-praising eye tends to be drawn towards comments that are especially kind. Either can lead to a distorted image of what actually happened in the classroom from the students' perspectives. The multiple choice items provide a better sense of the mean, but even this quantitative data can be misleading. My school places one of three letters next to the scores, indicating whether the number is in the upper levels (U), middle levels (M), or lower level (L). The assignment is based on the percentages in "strongly agree" (U), "disagree," and "strongly disagree" (L). But a professor who receives "agree" from 100% of his stu

Board Recruitment Resources in Philadelphia and Beyond

http://dustinkidd.blogspot.com 1. Business on Board : A function of the Arts and Business Council. Provides training to prospective board members and connects them with local arts organizations. 2. Philadelphia's Young Nonprofit Leaders : Provides training and resources for staff and volunteers, including board members, for local nonprofits. "Young" is broadly defined. 3. Blue Avocado : An online magazine about non-profit boards. 4. Board Cafe Archives : The predecessor to Blue Avocado. Has a nice section on recruitment and diversity. Here's a good one . 5. BoardnetUSA : A board recruitment and placement website. Like Monster.com for boards. 6. VolunteerMatch : Similar function to BoardNet. 7. Bridgestar : Connects corporate employees to nonprofit service. 8. Eide Bailley : Non-profit toolbox. Includes a nice short article about board service. 9. BoardSource : Recruitment and Orientation resources. More resources throughout the site. 10. Wharton Nonprofit Board

Useful Websites for Writers

1. Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way . The link goes straight to the Basic Tools page, which includes a pdf sample chapter from Cameron's book. If you're not ready to buy the book, this is a nice place to start on the Artist's Way. Cameron offers a lot of her work for free, unlike most similar authors. 2. William Strunk's The Elements of Style . Full-text available on this website. Great way to get familiar with grammar and punctuation basics. 3. Guide to Grammar and Writing . Nice menus for refreshing your grammar skills. 4. Citation Machine . Easy way to generate your citations.

Fixing Your Finances for the New Year?

Some of my favorite personal finance tools: 1. Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous and Broke : great book that is easy read but full of useful information. Read it with a notepad or journal handy. It also gives you access to a set of tools on Orman's website. 2. The Suze Orman show podcast. Free podcast of Orman's weekly show. A great way to learn more about money and making good financial decisions. 3. Mint.com . A website that can track all of your financial accounts. Other sites claim to do the same thing but I've found that only Mint can actually track all of them (some sites couldn't access by ING savings, others couldn't access my retirement accounts). It has tools for building a budget and tracking your expenses. Use the categories tool on the Transactions page to label and track your spending. Also be sure to download the iPhone app. 4. Get Rich Slowly . A great blog about saving money and making good financial decisions. 5. Wal

What's in Your Writer's Backpack

George Clooney's character in Up in the Air is a motivational speaker who begins his talks by setting a backpack on a table next to his podium, opening it, and then leaning in to the microphone to ask "What's in your backpack?" The character wants his audience to feel the weight of all that ties them down. I'm going to use the same question in a writing workshop tomorrow for faculty and graduate students. But I'm using the question very differently. I want my participants to take stock of all of the writing resources they already have, many of which they take for granted. The workshop actually brings together two different writing retreats: one for graduate students writing dissertations and one for faculty working on books or articles. Having been in both camps, I'll start with iconic stories from each experience: The horror of the blank page: When I was a graduate student, I followed my dissertation proposal defense with a heavy summer teaching load

What to Buy (and not buy) Organic

Nice posts on Andrew Weil's website with 12 foods to always buy organic and 12 foods that don't need to be organic (because of low pesticide use or low pesticide retention). 12 Foods to Buy Organic Peaches Apples Sweet bell peppers Celery Nectarines Strawberries Cherries Lettuce Grapes (imported) Pears Spinach Potatoes In Philly, I suggest the Fair Trade Stand at Reading Terminal, or the farmer's markets around town, especially at Rittenhouse. Many of these foods will not be available from those places when out of season. At that point, I turn first to Trader Joe's (best prices) and then Whole Foods (worst prices). 12 Foods you Don't Need to Buy Organic Broccoli Eggplant Cabbage Banana Kiwi Asparagus Sweet peas (frozen) Mango Pineapple Sweet corn (frozen) Avocado Onion For fresh non-organic food, I go Iovine at Reading Terminal (the big produce place in the SE corner). They also carry some organic food too (but it's usually not local). Otherwise, I go to Who

2010 Goals

Career Goals Publish two articles (goal is to have them at least accepted and forthcoming by year's end) Draft the proposal for my next book on popular culture Develop a longterm plan for research on art awards Get tenure (submit an excellent file; have positive results at the department level by year's end) Continue current service committees, but no new service (I do too much) File the first report on the Wolgin International Art Prize Draft several of my lectures as text that can be used towards publications and for improving the courses Financial Goals Have $25K in savings for a condo by year's end Submit a strong merit raise application at year's end (current application pending) Move current savings into a CD Health and Fitness Goals Yoga 2X/week Pilates 2X/week Strength Training 3X/week Abs 2X/week Continue cycling to work Get a physical Home New entertainment system Switch from Comcast to Clear Switch from home delivery to NYTimes Reader No new books (use librar