Assignment Overview: Social Issue Analysis

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:02]Let's talk about the social issue analysis assignment. Um, this is what the classroom looks like when you first log into Eagle. Um, do not worry if this is not your actual class or your semester, your term. Um, I'm recording this video because I just made some major changes to what the template looks like. And anytime I make changes, I need to make a new video. So, this is why it looks like this. Now, um if you are in this homepage to find the assignment and anything else that's going on in this class, start with modules here. Um the social issue analysis assignment is at the end of module 4 because I was just here. You see, Eagle took me to my last place. Um and you can find the assignment here.

[00:00:54]The purpose of this assignment is to consider social change happening in real time. Um, you learned back at the end of maybe module two about social change with the chapter on social movements.

[00:01:09]Um, and the idea is that society is always changing. Clearly, it's always changing. It's not the society that it was when you were born. And it was certainly doing some things before you showed up. and it's going to continue to do so. Um, nobody likes change though.

[00:01:26]And so when you see these changes happening around you, um, as they relate to these major social institutions that we've had to create in order to create a society that is stable, um, we tend to get up in arms about those changes. Um, we don't like change. It's uncomfortable. But what it does is reveal usually if you look at those um fights, those debates, those arguments, those you know people who want to talk about what's going on in society, you can see that often times they're asking those very questions. What is that social institution that the the fight is about? Um and it always boils back down often to what was that social institution supposed to be doing in the first place?

[00:02:16]And if we make that change, is it going to be good for that social institution and the stability of society or is it not going to be so good for that social institution and the stability of society? And that's what it is that you're trying to do. You will find one of those current events or controversial debates about a social institution of your choice and just talk about it. What is the debate about? What are you learning? if you look up somebody currently talking about it and you'll reveal hopefully um or you will think about what the sort of foundation of that debate is. So the first thing you're going to do is choose one of these social institutions. It's completely up to you which one you want to choose. By the time this assignment is due at the end of module 4, we would have talked about family, education, religion, economy, politics, and medicine and health. By the time you start to do this assignment, you might have not have gone through the chapters for that social institution. And it's totally fine. You can look it up in the in the textbook, but you're part of this society. you know what these social institutions are. You'll see in the template that I'm never asking you to define that social institution. Um, so you don't have to be an expert, if you will, and that social institution because you already know it. You live it in some way. And you're not talking about the institution itself. You're going to be talking about a current event or controversial debate or something that people are just generally talking about. um in that institution and it's important when I say current event that you should find something that's been debated about the last five years or something like that. So let's look first at what this template looks like. Again, if you click this link to download it here, my computer is set up to download.

[00:04:22]Um, if I click the link, it will show me the template right here in the browser.

[00:04:28]But you can also download it this way or close it and specifically download it that way. When you download it, it's going to go to your downloads folder or wherever you have that set up on your computer. Mine goes to my downloads folder. When you open up this document, you can see that you will choose a current event or controversial debate related to a social institution of your choice. And then you're going to identify four sources on the internet that are less than 5 years old discussing that topic. Here's what's important. I don't really want you to use peer-review research articles. So, don't go to the library first. One of the reasons why is because re research takes a long time to get published. So you might see something that's published in 2024, but it can be a study or research that happened in 2020. So it may not be as current. Anyway, I also don't necessarily want you um to look at academics talking about this because they're not necessarily representative of the people. They're trying to understand something deeply, sure, but it's not necessarily reflective of the everyday debate that's going on. So, for this assignment, peerreview research is not exactly the best thing. I also want you to be very careful about finding um sociology or psychology textbooks that might be talking about it. And when I say textbook, that can be something specifically like open stacks or it can be lumen learning or it can be thought co. There's so many um study materials online. I don't want you again to go learn about the social institution itself and all of the examples that they might give you. I want you to go straight to what this debate is. Um, so stay away from things like encyclopedia that's just telling you again what the definition of that thing is or even college or university programs. If I am a college and I want to encourage you to major in sociology, I might give you some really cool articles that you can read about sociology so that you know what sociology is about. I also don't want you to do that. You're not looking for correct answers about the social institution or for somebody to describe that institution to you. Again, you have your own textbook. You don't need any other ones. I want you to find the issue itself. So, you will tell me what institution you chose. Let's say you chose family, right? And then you're going to tell me what the topic is that you are looking into right here. How do you find that topic? Let's go to Gemini. You can use this is my my suggestion. You can use chat GPT. You can use whoever you use.

[00:07:24]But one of the cool things that you can do and you and because it's Gemini, you can also just do this straight in Google. You can say um what are some current events or controversial debates? That's the language that I'm giving you.

[00:07:41]Um related to let's say family.

[00:07:48]Let's say let's say you don't have one already that you're thinking about. You can ask Google or Gemini or chat GBT or whomever to give you some ideas. These are just some ideas that you can look into. Um so for instance, sometimes they may be some legal battles that people are arguing about.

[00:08:14]Um, there's a doctor who was in a legal fight after donating a kidney to his mother. That's a news report I might be interested in. Um, blended families and stepparenting might be a news report.

[00:08:28]Um, reproductive rights is a news a news report or something that people are generally talking about. Social media, that's a popular one. A lot of people talk about that one. Um, so anyway, these are just ideas, right? So, let's say I was in Google and I said, um, stepparent issues in the news. Same thing. It's going to give me a general AI sort of thought process of what kinds of things that you can talk about. But again, I want you to look at news articles, magazine articles, um, oh, JD Vance's views on stepparents.

[00:09:17]So, if that's a news report that works, it's August 2nd, 2024. Let's say that I'm interested in JD Vance's views on stepparents, and that's what I'm going to write about. I can take that as my topic. That's the thing I'm going to write here. And then when I go back to Google now, I'm saying, "Show me articles about JD Vance and step parenting." Now, I have a number of articles about it. Slate magazine has one. This article from the UK has one.

[00:09:53]Um, Mother Jones has one. This article, I don't know who they are, has one. There's even some videos, YouTube videos, um, Washington Post. The point is, tell me something that people are arguing about. In this case, I don't know what JD Vance, vice president of the United States, has said about stepparents. I I personally don't know what he said, right? But what he said clearly has people talking about it. Are you talking about the institution of family? Absolutely. Are you going to talk about the institution of family itself as an institution? No, that's not what I want you to talk about. What I want you to talk about is whatever this thing is that people are describing or chatting about or supporting or not supporting that JD Vance said about stepparents for instance and just talk about it. So, pull up one of these articles, learn what it says. Tell me here. I chose the article from Slate magazine for instance and tell the author, give me the link. You tell me why do you think that's a good article to use. You can say, you know, Slate magazine keeps up on current events or um it's a magazine or Washington Post has credible journalists and you know, yeah, they tell me what the vice president said. So, make some decisions about why you think it's a credible source. Mostly, I want you to double check that it's not one of those things that I told you not to use, right? So, tell me why you think this source works.

[00:11:28]It's current. It's a major newspaper.

[00:11:30]That's fine. And then tell me what you learned about it from the first source.

[00:11:35]Do it again from the second. Do it again from a third. And do it again from the fourth. Essentially, you pick a topic.

[00:11:43]You learn about it looking at four sources. They can be magazines. It can be newspapers. It can be a YouTube video. It can be a TED talk. It can be a documentary. It can be a panel of people actually discussing it. It doesn't matter so much exactly what those sources are. But be mindful. Choose things that you consider to be credible, that the people who are talking about it are worth learning from. um that it is current and it's not one of those articles or sources that I'm asking you not to use. After you've done that for four sources, that's the only research you have to do. You don't have to go find additional research. You don't have to find additional articles that help you build a picture of what step parenting is like. This isn't an essay.

[00:12:32]You're not making an argument. You're just finding what people are saying about that particular issue. And in this case for this example, apparently vice president said something about stepparents. So that's the the issue that you're dealing. So find exactly four sources, learn about the issue, and then you're going to reflect on what you've learned and then this is the opportunity where you talk about what were some of those differing opinions.

[00:13:02]Um, and hopefully does it reveal something or are people talking about what the vice president said because they feel some kind of way about family, how family is supposed to look, what family is supposed to do. Um, if we allow the society to continue on this pathway, then that could be a problem.

[00:13:24]If we stop society from changing and allowing for it to go in this pathway, whatever it is, then that would be a problem. I don't know the issue again, right? If it were my topic, this would be my opportunity to go read four articles to figure out what he said and what people are saying about it. And then in this part, after you've done that, just do some reflection about it.

[00:13:48]Why did you choose it? Um, I told you how to find a topic on the internet having no idea what I was going to do, but you can choose any topic that you want to use.

[00:14:01]So, the question is, how did you come up with it? The answer could be I did a Google search, but you may have another reason why you choose whatever your topic is. Um, how does learning about that topic help you understand the significance of the social institution itself? In this case, what does this topic or this debate help you understand more about family and how people think about family or what family means to society? Um, and what do you think about seeing this social change in progress?

[00:14:34]We don't debate about things that we agree about. We're up in arms and we're sending all these writing all these articles and hopping on the news and going on the radio. We do that when there's things that we don't that we don't agree about. That is what change looks like. It happens sometimes very fast because the vice president said something and it's very loud or it happens slowly over time, but it's always changing. And this is an opportunity to get some sense of how it looks in progress. Once you're done with your template, the last thing that you well with this part of the assignment, the last thing you're doing is using your own words and saying, "What might a sociologist coming from a structural functionalist perspective say about that topic? Not about the social institution, but about the topic." And by the end of the course, you've seen these major sociological perspectives come up. Tell me what you think they would say about that topic from that perspective. You're going to do it from the structural functionalist perspective, from the social conflict theorist perspective, and from a symbolic interactionist perspective. It's about the topic, not about the institution. And these need to be your words, not go to the internet and try to find the right answer because it's a it's a current event. So, you might not or you should not just find in a textbook what a social conflict theorist would say about it. You're not using textbooks and you're not looking at what they say in general. You want to be their voice right now. And then save this template and go back to the assignment and upload it for me. Um, as I said in the last video for the other assignment, and I say this for anything that you do, always look at the rubric so that you can see how you're going to be scored or graded. Um, and you can see each one of these criteria is particularly um, aligned with what's in the template. Um, so if you fill out the template, you'll obviously um, meet all the criteria for this rubric, but see how you earn those points. Sometimes you can earn six points, sometimes you can earn two points. Um, this is a good way for you to set yourself up to do the assignment in a strong way. Um, but it also works after you've completed it to check the rubric. Um, just to to check yourself and see if there's anything else that you need to do.

[00:17:10]Um, that's it. If you have any questions, always you can um definitely reach out and let me know how I can be of assistance.