COURSE DESCRIPTION

The principle objective of Physical Activity in Society is to understand the way in which people are physically active in a social context.  We will examine how social forces influence physical activity including cultural, economic, historical, and demographic considerations.  The course examines physical activity on both the individual and population levels to better understand benefits and barriers to activity in society.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Analyze contemporary issues in physical activity from a variety of disciplinary and professional perspectives.
• Understand physical activity on both the personal/individual level as well as the population level.
• Critically evaluate (and convey through writing) the assumptions, motives, and evidence that individuals and groups use in discussing physical activity.
• Use autoethnography to understand contemporary issues.

REQUIRED READING

Readings are available on Canvas.  There is no required textbook for the course.

COURSE FORMAT

This course is organized in a lecture format with discussions throughout. Though a larger class, these discussions are an important place to connect lecture content and class readings to your related experiences, interests, and knowledge.

COURSE ASSIGNMENTS AND EVALUATION

Specific details on assignments (including rubrics) are available on Canvas.  Due dates are included on the course calendar (p. 3) - all assignments are due at 11:59PM that day via Canvas.  Late assignments will lose points. Your course grade will be comprised of the following:

 Field Observation (40%)

An integral part of this class is field observations of physical activity (at least twice weekly) as a way to connect content in lecture and readings to the real world.  You will collect data as a participant observer (using autoethnography) in a physical activity of your choice - sports, dance, exercise, walking, gardening, cycling, etc.  These observations are the basis for your final paper.

Observations will be submitted three times during the semester and include the following three sections:

1. Address specific questions related to the current course content.
2. Tie together themes throughout the course.
3. Include scholarly sources (paper, book, etc.) related to your activity for use in your final paper.

Each assignment will have detailed prompts for each section.  All due are Fridays by 11:59PM.

 Exams (30%)

There will be two in-class exams covering material from lecture and the readings.

Final Project (30%)

The semester’s work will culminate in a project wherein you combine your field observations with scholarly sources you find to create a larger narrative about how your physical activity functions in society.

Overall semester averages will earn the following letter grades:

93-100:    A                 90-92:  A-

87-89:   B+                  83-86:  B                     80-82:  B-

77-79:   C+                  73-76:  C                     70-72:  C-

67-69:   D+                 63-66:  D                     60-62:  D-                   0-59.9:  F

Course grades will be assigned strictly according to this scale, rounded to the nearest whole number (so 92.4 earns an A-, not an A; 89.5 earns an A-, not an B+).

The purpose of this course is to examine the various experiences, perspectives, and expressions of Chicanas in the United States. This involves examining the meaning and history of the term “Chicana” as it was applied to and incorporated by Mexican American women during the Chicano Movement in areas of the Southwest U.S., such as Texas and California. We will also explore what it means to be Chicana in the United States today. The course will begin with a historical overview of Mexican American women's experiences in the U.S., including the emergence of Chicana feminism. We will discuss central concepts of Chicana feminism and attempt to understand how those concepts link to everyday lived experiences. Specifically, the relationship between gender, race/ethnicity, and class will be key as we discuss issues that have been significant in the experiences and self-identification of Chicanas, such as: family, gender, sexuality, religion/spirituality, education, language, labor, and political engagement. We will engage in interdisciplinary analysis not only concerning cultural traditions, values, belief systems, and symbols but also concerning the expressive culture of Chicanas, including folk and religious practices, literature and poetry, the visual arts, and music. Finally, we will examine media representations of Chicanas through critical analyses of film and television portrayals.

Description:

This course presents a general overview of the statistical methods used in the social sciences. While it’s important that you gain an understanding of the mathematical concepts behind the statistical analyses, it is of even greater importance that you leave this course with a conceptual and rational understanding of today’s most commonly used (and useful) statistical methods.

Truth claims made with statistics are abundant and often have the quality of facts in U.S. social and political life. Unfortunately, because many people do not understand the statistics undergirding these claims, they receive less scrutiny than they deserve. It is my primary goal to ensure that students learn the basic statistical literacy they need to be smart consumers of information. Our increasing reliance on statistics to understand the social world means that statistical and analytic skills are marketable skills. In fact statistics is one of very few classes that sociology majors take that provides them with concretely marketable skills. I believe that giving undergraduates a solid understanding of statistics is a way of democratizing knowledge and its production. In teaching statistics my goals are:

•   To demystify statistics so that every student can be a smart consumer of quantitative information.

•  To teach students to think sociologically with and about quantitative information.

• To provide students with a solid foundation of quantitative and computing skills that could serve

  as assets in subsequent employment and academic settings.

•   To demonstrate to students that learning statistics has practical applications outside of the       classroom in everyday life.

Texts:

Salkind, Neil J.. 2012. Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics: Excel 2010 Edition. 3rd Edition. SAGE Publications. 

Grading and Reqirement:

I will use a non-competitive grading scale. In other words, the grade you receive will not depend on how well others have performed in class. You can earn a maximum of 115 points in this class. Your grade will be based on your mastery of each of the required tasks in the class. The grading scale for the final course grade is as follows: 115-94=A; 90-93=A-; 87-89=B+; 83-86=B; 80-82-B-; 77-79=C+; 73-76=C; 70-72=C-; 67- 69=D+; 63-66=D; 60-62=D-; 59 & below=F.

I do not give incomplete and will not change the final grade for whatever reason. You have plenty of opportunities to do well in this class. Use them.

If you receive a final grade of B+ or higher, I will write a personal recommendation for you in the future, stating that you have significant quantitative and computing skills.CLASS & LAB ATTENDANCE 10 PTS

As will be addressed later in detail, you have two free absences you can choose. However, I’d recommend you to use them only for emergencies. More than two absences will affect your class attendance grades negatively.

Description:

This course presents a general overview of the statistical methods used in the social sciences. While it’s important that you gain an understanding of the mathematical concepts behind the statistical analyses, it is of even greater importance that you leave this course with a conceptual and rational understanding of today’s most commonly used (and useful) statistical methods.

Truth claims made with statistics are abundant and often have the quality of facts in U.S. social and political life. Unfortunately, because many people do not understand the statistics undergirding these claims, they receive less scrutiny than they deserve. It is my primary goal to ensure that students learn the basic statistical literacy they need to be smart consumers of information. Our increasing reliance on statistics to understand the social world means that statistical and analytic skills are marketable skills. In fact statistics is one of very few classes that sociology majors take that provides them with concretely marketable skills. I believe that giving undergraduates a solid understanding of statistics is a way of democratizing knowledge and its production. In teaching statistics my goals are:

•   To demystify statistics so that every student can be a smart consumer of quantitative information.

•  To teach students to think sociologically with and about quantitative information.

• To provide students with a solid foundation of quantitative and computing skills that could serve

  as assets in subsequent employment and academic settings.

•   To demonstrate to students that learning statistics has practical applications outside of the       classroom in everyday life.

Texts:

Salkind, Neil J.. 2012. Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics: Excel 2010 Edition. 3rd Edition. SAGE Publications. 

Grading and Reqirement:

I will use a non-competitive grading scale. In other words, the grade you receive will not depend on how well others have performed in class. You can earn a maximum of 115 points in this class. Your grade will be based on your mastery of each of the required tasks in the class. The grading scale for the final course grade is as follows: 115-94=A; 90-93=A-; 87-89=B+; 83-86=B; 80-82-B-; 77-79=C+; 73-76=C; 70-72=C-; 67- 69=D+; 63-66=D; 60-62=D-; 59 & below=F.

I do not give incomplete and will not change the final grade for whatever reason. You have plenty of opportunities to do well in this class. Use them.

If you receive a final grade of B+ or higher, I will write a personal recommendation for you in the future, stating that you have significant quantitative and computing skills.CLASS & LAB ATTENDANCE 10 PTS

As will be addressed later in detail, you have two free absences you can choose. However, I’d recommend you to use them only for emergencies. More than two absences will affect your class attendance grades negatively.

Description:

This course covers basic statistical methods in the social sciences to give graduate students a foundation in quantitative sociological methods in preparation for more advanced quantitative methods courses in sociology and other fields. Topics include: frequency and probability distributions, sampling distributions, estimation, and hypothesis testing. The first section of the course deals primarily with the concepts and theoretical foundations of inference. The rest of the course focuses on statistical techniques and various applications including the use of t-tests for comparing means and proportions, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for understanding the relationship between categorical factors and a continuous dependent variable, contingency tables and measures of association for categorical and ordinal data, and simple and multiple regression techniques for the analysis of the relationship between continuous independent variables on a continuous dependent variable. Emphasis will be placed on understanding which method to use for a given problem and how to interpret the results of statistical tests. Students will be required to learn how to manipulate statistical formulas and to work with STATA.

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