Course Assignments:
| 1. | Attendance | REQUIRED |
| 2. | Active Daily Class Participation & Leadership | 10% of grade |
| (includes classroom activities plus posting notes to the course Wiki) |
||
| 3. | Outlines & Reading Summaries (8) | 20% of grade |
| 4. | Group Presentation | 10% of grade |
| 5. | Two Papers: | |
|
5% of grade 20% of grade 15% of grade |
|
| 6. | Final Exam | 20% of grade |
- Items 3, 4, and 5 will be turned this in at the course Moodle site, in the Homework Dropbox folder. The Wiki (item 2) is also at the Moodle site.
Instructor’s Comment
Each of these assignments is designed to help you achieve the goals of the course, described above. For the most part, they are cumulative. The discussions, for example, help you complete the weekly summaries, which in turn help you learn to outline theoretical arguments. This helps you write the papers and the final exam. In-class writing facilitates discussions, which also give you practice analyzing social theory.
In many ways, the course is like a train. If you get on it, and stay on it, you will reach the destination. If you get off midway, however, it takes an awful lot of running to catch up.
Intellectually, the course is no harder than other upper-division SOAN courses. It does, however, require that you work ahead of deadlines. In forty years of teaching, I have yet to meet a student who can do theory at the last minute.
To use another metaphor: this course is like conditioning gym: the early part of the semester gets you in shape for the main event. If you do the work steadily and well, you will have no trouble with the end-of-semester rush.