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.
Here's what I've come up with so far:
1. Readings should not only be topically relevant, they should also be methodologically relevant. In popular culture, it is common to have readings by historians, cultural studies scholars, and other folks who study popular culture outside of a social science perspective. But I've stripped these folks out of the course for this fall. Nearly all of the readings are by sociologists and the few that are not are policy reports written by advocacy agencies (such as GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index). Nearly all of the readings involve use of the content analysis method. These readings allow us to think about methodological variations and to evaluate the choices made by different researchers. I've also included a few readings that perform audience studies or production studies to demonstrate that there are other methodological approaches we might consider. Finally, I'm starting the semester with a few readings on methods, particularly Kimberly Neuendorf's Content Analysis Guidebook.
2. Students need collective training as well as individual training. We will perform in-class analysis of a couple of different shows early in the semester to practice using the coding sheet and codebook. In fact, before we have the practice sessions, I'll spend some class time explaining the proposal and the protocols. The in-class training will not be graded, beyond contributing generally to the participation grade. Then, students will begin performing weekly analyses of a particular television show. Each student will have a different show, and I'm requiring that the show be available online so that they can pause and repeat segments while they analyze. They will submit a total of nine of these analyses, receiving feedback from me on each one and using the feedback to improve for the future.
3. Students should summarize the data they've collected, but they should also understand that summarizing data is very different from writing an article. I'm having students summarize data in two ways. First, they will give an in-class powerpoint presentation on the key themes we're analyzing (race, gender, sexuality, disability). Second, they will write a research report, incorporating any feedback I've given them on the presentation. I don't think of each student's work as a data set. Rather, I see this as the development of a collectively-produced data set on a season of prime time TV (well, half-season). But I'm still struggling with how to make the full data set available to all of the students in a timely manner that will then allow them to write about the entire data set, and not just about their portion of it. Since this is the first time I'm doing this, I need to be able to spend some time building the actual data set from their reports, cleaning it up, and thinking about the best way to organize it.
My course on the sociology of culture in the Spring of 2011 will give me a chance to transfer the research-intensive design to the graduate level, and have those students complete the data collection for the 2010-2011 prime time season.
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.
Here's what I've come up with so far:
1. Readings should not only be topically relevant, they should also be methodologically relevant. In popular culture, it is common to have readings by historians, cultural studies scholars, and other folks who study popular culture outside of a social science perspective. But I've stripped these folks out of the course for this fall. Nearly all of the readings are by sociologists and the few that are not are policy reports written by advocacy agencies (such as GLAAD's Network Responsibility Index). Nearly all of the readings involve use of the content analysis method. These readings allow us to think about methodological variations and to evaluate the choices made by different researchers. I've also included a few readings that perform audience studies or production studies to demonstrate that there are other methodological approaches we might consider. Finally, I'm starting the semester with a few readings on methods, particularly Kimberly Neuendorf's Content Analysis Guidebook.
2. Students need collective training as well as individual training. We will perform in-class analysis of a couple of different shows early in the semester to practice using the coding sheet and codebook. In fact, before we have the practice sessions, I'll spend some class time explaining the proposal and the protocols. The in-class training will not be graded, beyond contributing generally to the participation grade. Then, students will begin performing weekly analyses of a particular television show. Each student will have a different show, and I'm requiring that the show be available online so that they can pause and repeat segments while they analyze. They will submit a total of nine of these analyses, receiving feedback from me on each one and using the feedback to improve for the future.
3. Students should summarize the data they've collected, but they should also understand that summarizing data is very different from writing an article. I'm having students summarize data in two ways. First, they will give an in-class powerpoint presentation on the key themes we're analyzing (race, gender, sexuality, disability). Second, they will write a research report, incorporating any feedback I've given them on the presentation. I don't think of each student's work as a data set. Rather, I see this as the development of a collectively-produced data set on a season of prime time TV (well, half-season). But I'm still struggling with how to make the full data set available to all of the students in a timely manner that will then allow them to write about the entire data set, and not just about their portion of it. Since this is the first time I'm doing this, I need to be able to spend some time building the actual data set from their reports, cleaning it up, and thinking about the best way to organize it.
My course on the sociology of culture in the Spring of 2011 will give me a chance to transfer the research-intensive design to the graduate level, and have those students complete the data collection for the 2010-2011 prime time season.
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