Scholarship examining the educational potential of semester-long research projects in non-methods undergraduate sociology courses is limited. To address this gap in knowledge, I drew from active learning and problem-based learning literatures to develop a term research project in two sections of an undergraduate sociology course at a large public…

Increasing empathy toward others is an unspoken goal of many sociology courses, but rarely do instructors measure changes in empathy throughout a semester. To address this gap in the literature, I use a combination of quantitative and qualitative data gathered before and after students from five sociology classes participated in a simulation on…

Identifying and assessing core knowledge has been and continues to be a challenge that vexes the discipline of sociology. With the adoption of a thematic approach to courses in the core curriculum at Butler University, faculty teaching Introductory Sociology were presented with the opportunity and challenge of defining the core knowledge and…

We present a learning module to engage students in the global inequality debate using Google Public Data World Development Indicators. Goals of this article are to articulate the importance and urgency of teaching global issues to American students; situate the central debate in the globalization literature, paying particular attention to global…

The sociological imagination is a useful tool for teaching about plagiarism and academic integrity, and, in turn, academic integrity is a good case to help students learn about the sociological imagination. ?We present an exercise in which the class discusses reasons for and consequences of dishonest academic behavior and then examines a series of…

Simulation games can help overcome student resistance to thinking structurally about social class inequality, meritocracy, and mobility. Most inequality simulations focus solely on economic inequality and omit social and cultural capital, both of which contribute to social class reproduction. Using a pretest/posttest design, the current study…

This article describes an in-class activity that helps undergraduate students to understand the effects of their socio-economic position on the formulation, pursuit, and achievement of goals. Social stratification and inequality have an initial impact on the formulation of goals. Through this exercise students will perceive the effects of having a…

The American Institutes for Research (2006) recently reported that 20% of U.S. students graduating from four-year colleges and universities and 30% of those completing two-year degrees have quantitative literacy skills at only a basic level. Sociologists are currently working on a variety of approaches to incorporate quantitative literacy into…

Teachers have incorporated active-learning techniques into the sociology classroom for many years, but the types of applications and evaluations are quite varied. In this paper, the authors quantitatively test a particular form of active learning that they call "living-data exercises," which instructors can use to introduce sociological research…