New Media 5: Building a Better Mousetrap – Digital Incarceration
In the final part of this short series on new media we can note a significant extension to the idea of digital pessimism. While new media ownership is sometimes likened to what Socha and Eber-Schmid call “the growing pains of the American Wild West”, where a diversity of companies compete for market share, the reality […]
The Usefulness of Psychological Research
Exam questions that require you to “assess the usefulness” of psychological research have a high “waffle factor” potential (throwing everything you can think of at the question in the hope some of it might stick) and can be difficult to successfully negotiate unless you have a clear planned structure. As a general rule, therefore, try […]
Psychology: Reliability and Validity
Reliability and validity are two important methodological concepts in both Psychology and Sociology because they address the problems involved in “doing research” – and while this film is aimed at A-level and AP psychology students (who are required to cover the issues in much greater depth), it should also be useful for sociology teachers who […]
Now That’s Magic! The Free Will and Determinism Debate
One of the major debates in A-level psychology involves considering the relationship between – and relative importance of – free will and determinism in explaining human behaviour. At A-level a fruitful approach to free-will / determinism questions is not to argue for “one or the other” – either we can make autonomous behavioural choices or […]
Ethics: Adding Research Funding into the Mix
Ethics refer to the morality of doing something and ethical questions relating to research involve beliefs about what a researcher should or should not do before, during and after their research. As a matter of course, this normally includes considering both legal and safety issues Legal considerations include things like: Legality: e.g. Breaching Data Protection […]
Now That’s Magic Too! The Structure / Action Debate
Not to leave sociologists out of the equation, Olson et.al’s. research (Influencing choice without awareness, 2015) that looks at the tricks used by magicians to influence the choices made by their audience can also be used to illustrate the structure / action debate for students. Just as the magician uses a variety of techniques to […]
What online learners want: An empirical study of Mooc videos
Guo et.al’s study (How Video Production Affects Student Engagement: An Empirical Study of MOOC Videos) offers some helpful insights into the use of online and classroom video materials – whether you’re creating your own videos or taking advantage of those, amateur and professional, created by others. Although you can download the complete study, if you […]
Crime and Deviance Channel
Updated the 2 hours+ of video on the Channel to a higher resolution (which means less pixilation when playing at larger sizes).
Blooper
Venturing out of the studio to shoot some TCs for our new film on Case Studies, Steve has problems with wind and other noises-off…
Identity
Although the distinction (and relationship) between personal and social identities is an important way of understanding this concept in A-level Sociology, if you want to take your understanding a little further you need to think about two additional, complementary, ideas: 1.Being: This way of thinking about identity focuses on how social identities, considered in terms of […]