ERICA BENDER
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Resources for Instructors

I am immensely grateful for all of the teaching mentors I have had over the years who have shared their strategies, assignments, and resources with me. I believe quality teaching is the combined product of individual work and dedicated collaboration, so here I have compiled some of my most helpful/popular resources for fellow instructors. Please feel free to use these in your courses and/or teaching as you see appropriate. ​

General

Student-Centered Teaching
From a teaching workshop I led in 2016. Provides an introduction to the concept and tips for making any class activity more student-centered.

Sample Grading Rubrics
These are variations on my favorite/most used rubrics for grading papers.

Time Management Ideas for Graduate Student Teachers
This is a handout I used in leading several TA training workshops in 2015. Though written for new TA's, this handout provides useful ideas for anyone new to teaching for how to balance teaching with other academic work. 

Helping Students Study

Jeopardy-Style Review Powerpoint
This is a Powerpoint that you can use as a template for a Jeopardy-style review session. The Powerpoint includes instruction and lightning round slides, a 5x5 table for categories and questions, and hyperlinks to help it all run smoothly. Adapt the categories and questions to fit your class and/or unit. My students always have fun with this.

Reading Bubbles Review
I use this presentation to help students review and articulate connections between readings. This is a student-centered review exercise, rather than a lecture-based review. 

Organizing and Reviewing Concepts
This is a table that lists several concepts and asks students to compile basic information on each concept, including source reading, connection to course themes, and connections to other required readings. I often assign this for midterm review, but it can also be made into a collaborative in-class exercise by turning it into a Google Document. 

Assignment Ideas

Application Paper Ideas
This offers several different links to videos and articles that can be used for applying course material. I developed most of these while teaching "The Study of Society," which focuses extensively on conflict theory versus functionalism. 

Short Answer Question Ideas (Class, Race, and Gender)
Here are several short answer questions I have assigned as study guide and exam questions.

Instagram, Visual Sociology Assignment
This is an ongoing assignment that I have used where students upload pictures to Instagram, tag our course Instagram account, and hashtag the theme. This assignment brings social media into the class in an interesting and controlled way.  

Content Ideas

Audio-Visual Prezi Lectures
Here is a link to a page with several audio-visual lectures I have prepared using Prezi.

The Arbitrariness of Racial Boundaries
This is a presentation that uses images from the AAA to show that the boundaries between racial categories are biologically arbitrary and based on power. 

Marx Illustrated
An incredibly brief summary of Marxist theory, with pictures.

Comparing Marx and Weber
This is a handout with two tables for comparing Marx and Weber. One table compares "The Communist Manifesto" and "Class, Status, Party." The other table compares "The Communist Manifesto" and The Protestant Ethic.

20th Century Citizenship Configurations
A worksheet for teaching different arrangements for citizenship for modern states in the 20th century. I developed this while I was a Teaching Assistant for a class on modernity and social change. 

State Development and Agriculture
A student-centered in-class exercise for teaching about the correlation between the development of agriculture and the rise of states. I developed this exercise while I was a Teaching Assistant for a class on modernity and social change. 

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