WELCOME:  Welcome to the website for SOC304OL, The Sociology of Deviance, with Dr. Ellis Godard. In many ways, this course will be unlike any you've previously taken. CSUN (and even college) is new to some of you, Sociology is new to a number of you, and online instruction is new to many of you. The course content will presumably be new, and also challenge you in new ways. The kinds of requirements may also be new to you, at least as requirements. Even the choice of textbook will be new: You will pick your own!

UPDATES:  (Friday, August 22nd)

• I'm grading like mad, and replying to scores of emails per hour.. Keep an eye on your inbox and the grading report, and let me know if you see something wrong asap - i'll post grades throughout the weekend to the web, and post them to the Portal on Monday, hopefully (a day before their deadline).

SELECTED PREVIOUS UPDATES:  

• The final exam is ready for your enjoyment (45 have already done it!), and is due Friday at noon...
• ...though I won't penalize you as long as I have it by Saturday when I wake.
• I'll grade the final Saturday, and plan to post all grades on the following Monday.
• Quizzes 2, 3, 4, and 5 are up. You are required to take (at least) three of the five quizzes, so need (at least) two of these.. .
  • They were due by 10 a.m. on Wednesday 8/20. Grades will be up asap!
• Two errors in the key for Quiz1 have been fixed; thanks much to three inquisitive students who questioned their grade!
• Several broken links (on the submissions page, and to quizzes 2-5) have been fixed.
• Breach instructions have been posted. It should be fun, and bring together all that you've read and written.
  • Anyone pressed for time may forego that assignment. It effectively is now "extra credit": If you do it, it counts as planned; if you don't, it won't count against you (and everything else will be accounted in the same relatives proportions as before).
• Outlines and summaries for all five weeks are up on the submissions page, including more than 100 additoinal outlines and summaries.
  • They're also all in the same subdirectory, in case any of the links are broken.
  • There are more outlines and summaries for each week to come, but I wanted to make sure you had enough to move forward on, for reading, reactions, and studying.
• You may submit reaction papers (you need 3 total, one for each of 3 weeks, each addressing several other submissions) until Wednesday afternoon.
  • But you cannot submit an outline or summary if the ones for that text for that week have already been posted - too easy to cheat.. and just too easy.
• There's been a (late) request for a discussion board to discuss quiz questions and prep for the final. It's nearly the end of the term, and I've piles to grade, but I'll do my best get something up over the weekend. (This will, by the way, mean that I cannot accept late quizzes, since discussion may then address missed answers.)
• Outlines and summaries from weeks 2 and 3 have been posted to the submissions page (to prepare your reactions) as those deadlines have passed; and I'm adding week 3 now.
• The first quiz has been graded, and the deadline has passed. There are four more, and you need to three of the five. If you do more than three, the three "best" count.
• The fieldwork page has been updated a bit - such as pointing out that magazines are not journals.
• The grading report has been updated again. Please confirm your codename and textbook choice. I'll post the grades soon, but the priority is processing them for the submissions page.
• Other due dates have also been adjusted, one last time, to give you a little extra space in getting things done, and to allow me to catch up on emails (for which the replies may help you get work done).
• If there is any text for which I already have all the outlines and/or summaries for a given week, I'll go ahead a post them, as that happens- and I've setup a dynamic tool in the grading database to watch for those; several for weeks 4 and 5 are just one outline or summary away from being able to be posted, even though the deadline is several days away.
• The fieldwork page has been updated, with additional details about the six options, now split into two additional pages, with options suggested for the first and second field report you have due of two required.
• The schedule has been adjusted in several ways: texts by row instead of column (easier to read), separated from the topics (to resolve confusion about any ill fit), and an additional column for the few things in each text that are not assigned.
• The submissions page is linked to PDF versions of outlines and summaries (as the respective due dates pass) to prepare your reactions.
• The reading schedule is final for the selected texts.
• The list of approved textbooks has been extended, with additional texts, and updates on which are already "taken" by the limit.
• We may make some use of some elements of WebCT (aka "webteach") and Moodle elements. For now, there's only a welcome message sending you here.

WEBSITE:  This website provides a description and list of objectives for the course, an overview of what the course the involves, information about readings (including choosing a textbook), complete details about all course requirements, and a schedule of readings and assignments. Initial versions of each are provided in a summary Syllabus document, although structural elements (including readings, topic schedule, and due dates other than the exam) are subject to change at the instructor's discretion. The online materials in this website always supercede any other, including the summary Syllabus document!.

GENERIC:  The site also includes general course guidelines which apply to all of my courses. You are obliged to read, agree to, and follow these guidelines, which entail all of the generic material not specific to this class - such as about plagiarism, late work, and incompletes. (Some elements, such as the grading of assignments, is superceded by course-specific instructions here. Others are obviated by the online nature of this class, such as that assignments will not be submitted in hardcopy. I will produce an abbreviated version ASAP.)

GRADES:  Finally, the course includes (in PDF format) a complete grading report, which will be updated throughout the term, detailing your progress and performance on all graded components of the course, and provides a running summary of your performance in terms of preliminary "what's my grade now" estimates. These grades are listed by a codename that you must provide (a favorite number, color, town, food, comic, etc. - anything that's not personally identifying and not vulgar in any language).

Evaluations are encouraged at any time via RateMyProfessor, ProfessorPerformance, or elsewhere.