[akitae]

Social Sciences 1SS3
Dr. Carl Cuneo

Courseware:

THE LOGIC OF INQUIRY : SOCIAL SCI INQUIRY 1SS3 : SOCIAL MEDIA
MAKING SENSE: IN SOCIAL SCIENCES STUDY GUIDE
CITES & SOURCES CDN EDITION

The Social Sciences course is I would say an interesting course. You are in a class of about 30 students and it's very open to discussion and lots of interaction. The three textbooks are not that expensive, though I didn't buy two of them as I thought they weren't that necessary. The only one that you use often is the Making Sense text and maybe the Cites and Sources. But you can just Google how to do APA citations as well as McMaster has a page dedicated to it on their library page. The class is supposed to be about 3 hours long, but you usually only stay for 2 hours. The course basically talks about social media (Facebook, Twitter, Privacy, Bullying) and the issues that are attached. It's easy to get participation marks as he uses the iClicker during classes and basically you get full marks from that.

I had Dr. Carl Cuneo for the professor and he was an interesting professor I must say. He was decent at talking, he did mention that he wasn't that great of a presenter. He often trails off onto somewhat related topics and can sometimes be a bit blunt. I also feel that he didn't He is very nice at times and is often open to give help to students whenever you need help, he also replies to mail pretty quickly which is great. I would say he's not the best lecturer and often times can be confusing, but he can be helpful and nice when you need it.

Now, there is a final project for the course that you can choose to do it by yourself or with a group up to 4 members. Honestly the final project is a killer, you have to start it ahead of time or else you will suffer the days before it's due. You have to have a certain amount of peer reviewed articles as well as a lot of analysis on the topics and quite a bit of questions to be answered. You also have the option of doing a video about 5-10 minutes long that can also reduce the amount of written work that you have to hand in. Pick the video for sure, it's easy marks and all you have to do is make it relevant to your topic.

To be honest the beginning of the course seems like it will be a easy bird course, but then the final project comes along so suddenly and steamrolls you into oblivion. I got a 10 in this course and I did the project like two days before and attended about 90% of the time. Although you probably will do it anyways, but seriously don't save the project until last, because you will want to die a thousand deaths.

Social Inquiry 1SS3 with Dr. Cuneo was good.

From this course, I learned how to become a good presenter and organize information. I agree with poster that this might be easy at beginning. But the course is getting hard later on. The course material is unique! The skills you learn from this course will be used a lot if you are continuing social science.

Professor: George Hough
Theme: Human and Animal Trafficking

If you have this professor, DON'T TAKE HIS CLASS. He will rant about his life to the extent where the course should be renamed to 'Inquiry into the Life of George Hough'! The class size was about 30 students and the lecture was on Friday from 11:30 am to 2:20 pm. The content that this professor covered in class was useful in terms of writing skills, but the METHOD of teaching was absolutely horrendous. I remember when we had to write a literature review and all that was provided was just a handout posted on Avenue with a couple of links on it. Additionally, detailed assignment instruction and guidelines were given AFTER submission! We had one test that was primarily on how to use the library databases and how to cite things properly. Overall for me, this was a bird course but one that bored my mind to death while doing it. The only upside to this course was that there was no exam.

I bought the three books required for this course:
Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa --> We were split into groups, only read 8 chapters and presented a summary each class, asked questions of each group and then it was never used again.
Cites & Sources: An APA Documentation Guide 5th Edition --> Useful if you are continuing in the Social Sciences; helps you cite things properly in APA format
Making Sense in the Social Sciences: A Student's Guide to Research and Writing --> Bought it off an upper year student for $10. Didn't use it in class because you're expected to read it on your own.

The final project is basically a final essay and presentation that the small assignments ultimately lead to.
Just pick a topic related to the course theme and write an essay about it using some of the handouts that
he gives you.
Overall Impression: