IMPORTANT INFO ABOUT ATTENDANCE AND PARTICIPATION:

Participation for internal as well as external students means to think and discuss with others what thinking sociologically means in reference to a given week in preparation for your final assignment. Your contribution will be assessed on the basis of your familiarity and understanding of the weekly course contents from the lecture and the reading(s). Discussion means further that you are required to engage with others. The focus is not so much the quantity, but the quality of your contributions. You can gain a maximum 26% over 13 weeks (=2% per week). Physical presence only is not enough. It is the quality of your contributions that counts the most. Talking to the lecturer after class also does not count as participation.

INTERNAL STUDENTS:

A) Attendance and Participation refers to the lecture time (Tuesday 9-11am), NOT the tutorial. Discussion and Q&A are part of the lectures and the basic course contents will be covered and discussed here.

B) Attendance and participation in tutorials is recommended, but voluntary. In the tutorials we will specifically discuss the readings (and sometimes the additional readings) and examples. This is the space for you if you are interested in a deeper understanding of concepts and social issues and how to analyse them. The tutorials are also the place to prepare you more specifically for the final assignment. You are welcome to bring notes, drafts and ideas.

EXTERNAL / OUA STUDENTS: As an online student, attendance and participation means three things:

A) You need to listen to the recorded lecture;

B) you need to post and discuss with others in the weekly online forum

C) We expect you to post within a week after the lecture (Tuesday). There are no extensions possible. The reason for this is that late contributions weeks after topics have been covered are lost. Should you have problems or serious reasons for not being able to post within a week, please let me know by email (norbert.ebert@mq.edu.au).

The proposal has three main components:

A) pick a sociological concept or approach from week 2-8 and define it in no more than 500 words.

B) pick an example that you would like to analyse sociologically. Describe your example in no more than 500 words clearly so that a person who has never heard of it can understand it.

C) Outline in no more than 300 words how A) and B) are linked in your opinion.

Taken together this is a basic outline and structure for your final assignment (social analysis).

A template for the proposal will be developed in class over the first five seven week of the course.

The goal of this assignment is that you demonstrate that you can apply your sociological tools or one of them. To do so, you are required to do the following:

a) pick a sociological concept or approach from one of the weeks and define it clearly

b) pick an example that you would like to interpret and analyse sociologically. Describe your example with enough, but not too much detail!

c) interpret and analyse a) with the aid of b)

Your example can be sourced from a reading, a clip, a movie scene, a newspaper article. The most important point is RELEVANCE. What ever choice you make, it needs to be clearly focused and linked to your approach so that a meaningful sociological analysis is possible.

A FEW HINTS to start with:

Make sure your assignment is not just a description. Describing a phenomenon well is important, but it is not the same as an analysis / interpretation.

Sometimes we choose topics, because they are close to our own interests. That is generally fine and good. However, the risk is that we start to advocate rather than analyse or interpret. Try and stay on the analytical level of your writing.

Balance between sociological concepts, the example and the analytical part of your assignment is important too. Make sure you do not use up, for example, 1500 words describing your example with only 500 words left for concepts and interpretation.

It is good to have a clear structure with, for example, 2-300 words introduction, 5-700 words main parts (concepts, example, analysis) and a 3-500 words conclusion.

An introduction is like a promise. You promise what you will do and the point is to then do it in what follows.

An analysis is a breakdown of a more complex issue (your example), into simple elements (opposite of synthesis). 

A conclusion is not a summary, but this is the point where you CONCLUDE what the results of your analysis are.