We have our Introductory Sociology class of 150 students doing research papers for the first time and I was thinking of a way to get them to share their results with the rest of the class. They were all asked to examine the portrayal of one group in the mass media.They needed to prepare a code sheet, document their results, and explain the meaning of their findings using sociological concepts. If I go into class and ask 150 of them to share their results with the rest of the class they will just stare at me. So, I came up with an idea. I will ask each one of them to choose one significant statistic from their data which uses a number from 1-100. Then they will write out what that statistic means. For example 3 = the percentage of visible minority children appearing in TV advertising during children's Saturday morning cartoons. Then I will call out the numbers from 1-100 (either numerically or in random order) and whoever has that number as their significant statistic will stand up and read out their results and tell us something interesting about their research project.
- Erin Steuter, Mount Allison University -
